Systematic rape against transgender prisoners in the United States prison system
V-coding is the common practice in the United States to subjugate transgender female prisoners to daily sexual assaults in all-male jails to please or calm down male prisoners.[1][2][3][4]
A 2021 report found that 69% of transgender women were subdued into performing sexual oral practices against their will in all-male prisons, 58.5% reported being sexually assaulted, and 88% reported being forced into some "marriage-like" relationships with their respective male inmates.[2][3]
Reports found that transgender people are significantly more susceptible to being victims of sexual assaults and sex trafficking thancisgender peers.[5][6][7][8][9][10] TheUnited States Department of Justice stated in a report in 2022 that 66% of trans people experience sexual assault at some point in their lives, and 15% of trans people report being sexually assaulted by police or prison staff (32% for African-American trans people).[8]
In 2025, more than 2,000 transgender women were incarcerated in federal jails in the US.[11]
A 2018 report from theIndiana Maurer University School of Law, along with a subsequent report in theUCLA Journal of Gender and Law,[12] found that, based on accounts of former inmates, it was common for trans women placed in men's prisons to be assigned to cells with aggressive cisgender male cellmates to maintain social control and to, as one inmate described it, "keep the violence rate down", or as prison authorities stated, "violence prevention". Trans women used in this manner are often raped daily. This process is known asV-coding and has been described as so common that it is effectively "a central part of a trans woman's sentence".[4][13]
The prisoners serving as "customers" for these women are informally referred to as "husbands". A 2021 California study found that 69% of trans women prisoners reported being made to perform sexual acts they would have rather not, 58.5% reported being violently sexually assaulted, and 88% overall reported having taken part in a "marriage-like relationship".[2][3][4] Trans women who physically resist the rape are often criminally charged with assault and placed in solitary confinement, the assault charge then being used to extend the woman's prison stay and deny her parole.[14]
It is common for correctional officers to publicly strip search trans women inmates, putting their bodies on display for staff members and other inmates. Trans women in this situation are sometimes made to dance, present, or masturbate at the correctional officers' discretion.[15] A 2017 study by theSylvia Rivera Law Project found that 75% of trans women respondents in New York state prisons were subjected to sexual violence by a correctional officer, with 32% being victimized by two or more COs and 27% of respondents being forced to perform oral sex for a CO.[16]
FollowingExecutive Order 14168 signed byDonald Trump on the inauguration day of his second presidency where he defined sex and gender as one and the same as biological constant, and where he clearly stated that trans female inmates should be relocated to all-male jails,[11] many female transgender prisoners and several organizations issued lawsuits against the federal State, stating that such order violated theEighth Amendment's "protection from cruel and unusual punishment" partly because of V-coding,[3][17][18] arguing that they "feared for their lives".[19] Several judges blocked Trump's order,[3][20][21] but federal officials relocated trans women into all-male prisons anyway despite the rulings.[21][22]
Non-incarcerated transgender women revealed they were scared of becoming imprisoned for simply being transgender and thus experiencing V-coding since Trump's second presidency.[23][24]
^Oparah, Julia C. (April 24, 2013). "Feminism and the (Trans)gender Entrapment of Gender Nonconforming Prisoners".UCLA Women's Law Journal.18 (2).doi:10.5070/L3182017822.
^Oparah, Julia C. (April 24, 2013). "Feminism and the (Trans)gender Entrapment of Gender Nonconforming Prisoners".UCLA Women's Law Journal.18 (2).doi:10.5070/L3182017822.
