In the American prison system, administrative language often disguises brutality. One of the clearest examples of this is v-coding, a term that sounds procedural but carries a long history of deliberate harm. For transgender people in custody, particularly transgender women housed in men’s facilities, V-coding has not functioned as protection. It has functioned as exposure.
Understanding V-coding is not about excusing criminal behavior. People in prison are there because of convictions or pending charges, and accountability matters. But accountability does not include sexual violence, medical neglect, or psychological destruction. When harm is predictable, documented, and repeatedly ignored, it stops being incidental and becomes systemic.
V-coding sits squarely in that category.
What V-Coding Is and How It Was Used
Historically, v-coding emerged as a way for prisons to label inmates considered “vulnerable” or “passive.” In men’s prisons, this label was not applied to protect those individuals from harm. Instead, it often justified placing them in cells with dominant or aggressive prisoners as a means of social control. The expectation, rarely stated outright but widely understood, was that violence, including sexual violence, would enforce compliance.
For transgender women, this practice proved especially devastating. Their bodies, identities, and perceived differences made them visible targets in environments built around rigid hierarchies of masculinity and dominance. Rather than adapting housing policies to account for that risk, many institutions treated it as a feature rather than a flaw.
The result was not accidental abuse. It was foreseeable harm embedded into routine administrative decisions.
Violence as a Tool, Not a Failure
One of the most difficult truths about v-coding is that it worked exactly as intended. By placing transgender prisoners in situations where assault was likely, prisons outsourced discipline to inmate violence. Control was maintained without additional staffing, training, or accountability. When abuse occurred, it was dismissed as an unfortunate but unavoidable reality of incarceration.
This framing allowed institutions to deny responsibility while continuing the same practices. Transgender prisoners who reported rape or coercion were often met with indifference or punishment. Transfers to isolation units were framed as protection, even when those units mirrored solitary confinement. Complaints were labeled disruptive or manipulative. The underlying logic remained unchanged: vulnerability was something to be managed, not addressed.
This is why v-coding cannot be understood as a misguided safety measure. It was a governance strategy that treated sexual violence as an acceptable outcome.
Modern Prisons, Old Logic
While the explicit term “v-coding” is less commonly used today, its logic persists across the U.S. correctional system. Transgender prisoners are still routinely flagged as high-risk without meaningful individual assessment. Housing decisions are often made based on anatomy or staff assumptions rather than safety planning. The same patterns repeat under new terminology.
Some facilities respond to perceived risk by placing transgender prisoners in protective custody units that severely restrict movement, social interaction, and access to programs. These placements are frequently indefinite. For many, they involve spending nearly all day in a cell, with limited human contact and minimal mental health support.
The harm here is quieter but no less real. Isolation exacerbates depression, anxiety, and gender dysphoria. It compounds existing trauma and increases the risk of self-harm. What is presented as protection functions as punishment, imposed not because of misconduct but because of identity.
The Cost of Visibility
Being labeled vulnerable does not make a transgender prisoner invisible. It often does the opposite. Special movement schedules, distinct housing assignments, and increased surveillance mark someone as different. In environments where difference is already dangerous, that visibility can invite harassment, exploitation, or abuse by both prisoners and staff.
Transgender prisoners report being mocked, deliberately misgendered, or placed in humiliating situations under the guise of security. Strip searches become tools of degradation. Medical appointments become spectacles. The very systems meant to manage risk can amplify it.
When institutions know this and proceed anyway, the harm is no longer deniable.
Medical Care as Leverage
V-coding frequently intersects with access to medical care, particularly gender-affirming treatment. Transgender prisoners often encounter delays or denials of hormone therapy justified by “security concerns.” In some cases, continuation of care becomes conditional, used as leverage to enforce compliance or silence complaints.
This dynamic places transgender prisoners in impossible positions. Seeking care increases scrutiny. Avoiding care worsens dysphoria and mental health. Either choice carries consequences that would not exist if the system treated medical needs as non-negotiable.
Courts have increasingly recognized that gender dysphoria is a serious medical condition. Yet recognition on paper does not guarantee care in practice, especially when vulnerability is treated as a liability rather than a responsibility.
Reporting Abuse Rarely Brings Relief
For transgender prisoners subjected to sexual violence or coercion, reporting abuse is rarely a path to safety. Many learn quickly that complaints lead to retaliation, disbelief, or further isolation. Transfers framed as protection often result in harsher conditions. Grievance systems are slow, opaque, and frequently controlled by the same institutions accused of harm.
This creates a culture of silence. Survivors stop reporting. Administrators point to low complaint numbers as evidence that the problem is exaggerated. The cycle reinforces itself.
The existence of policies like the Prison Rape Elimination Act has not fully disrupted this pattern. PREA requires individualized housing decisions and recognizes the heightened risk faced by transgender prisoners, but enforcement is inconsistent and oversight weak. Without consequences for noncompliance, policy becomes symbolic rather than protective.
Accountability Without Dehumanization
It is important to be clear about what this conversation is not. Acknowledging the harms of v-coding does not minimize the seriousness of crime or the rights of victims. Incarceration is a legal consequence imposed by the state. But the state’s authority has limits.
Punishment is the loss of liberty, not exposure to rape or psychological torture. When prisons knowingly place people in situations where violence is likely, they exceed those limits. This is not about comfort. It is about constitutional and human rights obligations.
Empathy for transgender prisoners does not undermine justice. It reinforces the principle that justice must operate within ethical boundaries.
Why the System Resists Change
V-coding and its modern equivalents persist because they are convenient. They reduce staffing demands. They avoid difficult conversations about housing reform. They shift responsibility away from institutions and onto individuals labeled as problems.
Meaningful reform requires effort. It requires individualized assessments, staff training, and accountability mechanisms. It requires acknowledging that existing practices cause harm. For systems built on risk avoidance and liability management, that acknowledgment is uncomfortable.
But discomfort is not an excuse for continued abuse.
What Humane Reform Actually Looks Like
Ending the harm associated with V-coding does not require abolishing incarceration overnight. It requires rejecting sexual violence and extreme isolation as management tools. Humane reform centers on the idea that safety and dignity are compatible with security.
Facilities that have reduced abuse do so by involving prisoners in housing decisions, offering voluntary specialized units that are not punitive, guaranteeing access to medical care, and enforcing consequences for staff misconduct. These approaches do not weaken control. They strengthen legitimacy.
The evidence is clear: when institutions treat transgender prisoners as human beings rather than liabilities, violence decreases.
The Bottom Line
V-coding reveals what happens when bureaucracy is allowed to replace morality. It shows how systems can normalize abuse by hiding it behind administrative language and risk management frameworks.
Transgender people in prison are not symbols or exceptions. They are human beings under state control. The measure of a justice system is not how it treats the most compliant, but how it treats the most vulnerable.
A system that knowingly allows harm is not maintaining order. It is perpetuating abuse with paperwork.
Empathy is not indulgence. It is clarity. And clarity is necessary if real reform is ever going to happen.
