4. Rayne Vylette on Life as a Transgender Indigenous Woman in Florida Prison

In episode 4 of “60 Seconds Remaining”, Julian Wilson talks to Rayne Vylette, a transgender and Indigenous woman serving the remainder of a 30-year sentence at Dade CI in South Florida. Rayne talks about the community life she’s intentionally created for herself on the inside, including a myriad of artistic and activist groups. She details the facilities’ mental health regimen for those diagnosed with gender dysphoria, including weekly group therapy, monthly individual counseling, and medical monitoring for hormone therapy.  She details Dade CI’s aging conditions and housing setup, challenges with misgendering, inconsistent enforcement of separate shower policies, unsafe cell assignments, a past week-long sexual assault, and uneven implementation of PREA reporting.

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60 Seconds Remaining Podcast is a production of Comfrey Films. 

Directed by Julian Wilson. 

Produced by Joie Lou Shakur.

Edited by Wowow Podcasts

Sound score by Miss B Haven. 

Episode art is by Courtney Sebring. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 1:12

My name is Rain Violet. I am a transgender and indigenous woman in the Florida prison system, serving the remainder of a 30-year prison sentence. Currently incarcerated in South Florida at Dade TI.

SPEAKER_04 1:31

And how are you feeling coming into this conversation today?

SPEAKER_05 1:36

You know, I do feel very energized. I do have periods where that energy waxes and wanes, and sometimes I really struggle to like collect the energy to get anything meaningful done. But lately I'm kind of on an energy high and I'm feeling pretty productive and this feels like something that's really meaningful. So I'm really honored to be a part of it.

SPEAKER_04 2:02

Great. It's so good to hear how you're doing right now and feeling energized. I know it is it's a difficult thing to get that going inside. And before we even get to talking about inside, I wanted to ask you something about you that you want people to know first about you. Yeah, about your personality, your interests.

SPEAKER_03 2:26

Sure.

SPEAKER_05 2:27

Okay. Well, I have always been a lover of music, but I haven't always been terribly musical, so I did play saxophone growing up. I love dance, but I haven't danced in over 25 years. Last thing I did was ballroom dance classes, and would love to get back into that again. Before prison, I was afraid to stand up in front of a group of people, but while incarcerated, I was in the gavel club, which is like Toastmasters, a public speaking club, and now I feel pretty comfortable getting in front of just about any size group. Not terribly athletic, though I was a swimmer back in high school. I really prefer to stay inside, don't really like to sweat all that much. I love clothes, fashion, beauty, makeup, all that girly stuff. I worked as a retail fashion stylist while I was on probation. And though I was only making $14.50 an hour relative to like the $60,000 a year I was making as a network engineer, I really enjoyed the work as a fashion stylist more. Technically easier, but just knowing that I was doing something that helped people feel good about themselves made me look forward to work every day. Plus, I got to dress really well. So there was that too.

SPEAKER_03 3:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 3:56

Wow, that's so cool. That especially inside, I'm always fascinated with the growth and the opportunities that folks kind of make happen for themselves, despite their circumstances, you know. I think it's so cool that you um, you know, feel confident in speaking. That's a great position to to be in, to have confidence when you speak to people.

SPEAKER_05 4:19

Well, it's like I was explaining to a cousin of mine today. Uh she had responded to an email of mine, and a kind of jarring thing for us is that you might get in touch with somebody that you haven't talked to for 15 years, and they'll act like you just left the streets yesterday, like your circumstances haven't changed, and you've worked on yourself not at all. Like you're the same person you were all those years ago, and that's just not true of anyone, whether they're inside or out. And though we are incarcerated, I know many people who make a very conscious choice to use this time to develop skills and abilities and confidence that they can use when they go to the streets so they can advocate for things that mean something to them and and really make a difference.

SPEAKER_04 5:11

Yeah, that's amazing. So before we get into what happens on the day-to-day and really kind of being like grounded in and the body and what your physical like experience and mental experience is like, I'm curious about the structure of your of the facilities. Can you describe the physical conditions of the facility you're in?

SPEAKER_05 5:36

Sure. And I want to preface this by saying that every facility is different, every administration is different, every prison population is different, and all of those varying factors impact the operation of a facility or the uh dysfunction of a facility, as seems to be the case here more often than not. But typical day for me, get up at about six in the morning, get ready to go to breakfast. I typically have business in the programs building. So on Monday, I go over there to do some typing for Dabbel Club. On Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I participate in a computer-based vocational class. Right now I'm doing fashion essentials. On Friday morning, I have Gavel Club Band where I sing as a background singer at the moment. And then after that, we have Gavel Club itself. I also might attend a few church services a week. But after my morning callouts, usually by about 11:30, 11 o'clock, 11:30, we're heading back to the dorms from our morning call outs. There are always additional call outs. I might have medical or on Thursdays, we have transgender support group. For me, that's at 11. So on that day, I don't go back to the dorm. I stay up at mental health and we end up counting up there. But ordinarily I would come back to the dorm. Count will be at about 11:30, 12 o'clock or so. And then on a good day, it'll only last an hour. But here at Dade, we frequently have at least one recount. So that can make for a very long period inside the cell. And then lunch, another count time, a few hours in between, which I try to be productive during. That's when I like to make my phone calls or emails or maybe start watching a little bit of news. During the five o'clock count of it's closer to like 6:30, actually. That's when the transgender population here is able to take their showers. So that's my shower. And after that, it's kind of time to chill out. I'm in a program dorm called Peer-to-Peer. So, you know, we typically will have sports on one TV, and then we'll put a DVD on the DVD player and we'll veg out with that. I'll make a bowl of something to eat, maybe a soup and beef stew or some summer sausage. That's one of my favorite. Maybe some chips on top. And at the end of it all, 9 30, 10 o'clock, it's time for Master Raster count. And that's when they come through and they read off a list of all of our names and look at our pictures and make sure that all of us who are supposed to be in the cell are in the cell. And then they close the doors, and that's a wrap for the night. So I typically don't go to bed until about 12 30, 1 o'clock in the morning. And then wake up again at 6 and do it all over again.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Wow. That that seems like quite the day, quite the week that you kinda have. I'm intrigued by a couple of things. I want to hear more about the support group.

SPEAKER_05 9:11

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_06 9:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 9:13

So it's not really a program, but in Florida, those of us that are transgender and have been formally diagnosed as having gender dysphoria, we are we are provided a regimen of mental health treatment, and that includes group therapy on Thursdays. Right now there are two large groups of people that meet with one of the mental health counselors, but it it tends to be a little bit more unstructured and allows people to vent about whatever's going on with them. We also have individualized treatment once a month. So in addition to the weekly group therapy, I also see my counselor about once a month when I can just vent and talk and process everything that's going on with me. And there's always something going on with me. In addition to that, there's regular medical visits with the director of medical here at aid, and he will look at, for those of us that are on hormone therapy, he'll look at our hormone levels and make sure that they reflect what they should, given the prescription that he has provided. There are populations of people that are on hormones but don't take their hormones, so that's I think what he's looking for. But the group therapy is similar to what I experienced on the street. When I was out there in Orlando, anyone that's in the Orlando area might know about the center on Mills. And that that was the first trans support group I was ever part of. And it's so similar in structure. It's just as much a free-for-all. Any attempt to structure it always fails, but that's not even the benefit. It's just the commensuration with other girls and being able to relate our experiences and being able to share things that we know about the current things that are going on in terms of advocacy for the community or our legal struggle or things that people are experiencing that they need to grieve. It just makes us feel a little bit more together. And uh in so much as it's possible in here, I wish it were more possible, it is a temporary period of solidarity.

SPEAKER_03 11:37

Wow.

SPEAKER_04 11:39

And about how many people you do you think are in that group?

SPEAKER_05 11:44

So in Florida in general, there's only like, I don't know, less than 200 people. Let's call it 180 people who are gender dysphoric with that formal diagnosis. And the majority of us are either LaCola annexed up north or Date CI down here. So our population of transgender inmates here is pretty pretty high relative to anywhere else you're going to go in the state. But in my transgender group, it's not unusual for us to have roughly 10 people in the group. There are many more people with the formal diagnosis, but not everyone even desires to go to group. But there are those of us that are regulars and diehards, and those are the ones that you see just about every week.

SPEAKER_04 12:34

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 12:35

So what probably about 10 per group.

SPEAKER_04 12:37

What keeps you going to the group?

SPEAKER_05 12:40

Same thing that kept me going to group on the outside. I like the opportunity to see what's going on in my community. I like the opportunity to share with them what I'm aware of in terms of advocacy. I, by dent of my like my advocacy work, I'm I tend to be more aware than most girls of what's going on with legal struggles or what resources are recently becoming available, what cases might affect us in another state, or if they're talking about something that I know that they should be grieving and they don't know how to articulate the nature of their complaint, I can offer to help them. So really it's the best opportunity for me as an inside advocate to stay aware of what's going on with everyone, and it really gives me an opportunity to broaden that awareness and to offer myself up whenever possible.

SPEAKER_04 13:38

I'm curious about the way if you can kind of paint me an overview of the specific facility that you're in. They keep them separated. And so yeah, I'm curious uh what it's like in Florida.

SPEAKER_03 14:02

Sure.

SPEAKER_05 14:03

So State CI is set up in kind of a two-part compound, with half of the compound being a set of open bay dorms, which is to say each of those buildings has two wings, and each wing is just one large room with a bunch of bunk beds in it. That's the housing area. On the other side, on the north side, which is where I'm at, it's a bunch of T buildings, which are shaped like a T, but they have three wings, and each wing has two floors, and each floor has like twenty two cells with two bunk beds in it, except for a few on the bottom for disabled people. So in my side of things, this facility is very old and it shows the age is definitely showing through the cracks, literal cracks. The the facility is a little bit under fire because of issues with heat mitigation during the summer. They just had an audit, but for the most part, they drew some new tile on the showers, some new paint on the buildings, and a lot of the really critical issues got glossed over. As far as the transgender population, though, I think at one point it was the intention of the administration, both here and at Wakola, to house all the transgenders together to avoid problems, but it just didn't work out that way. In some cases, arguments between the girls would make it more likely that there were problems. A big problem that we currently face is that we may be housed anywhere on the compound now as long as our housing level and custody level allow us to. I, for example, am medium custody, I could be in an open bay dorm, but all of the open bay dorms are for people that are 50 or over. When I first got here, so I ran into a problem that many people run into, many trans women, and that's that my bunky didn't really want me in there. Some people, my butt heads with somebody who's a gang member. A lot of gang members don't want to be housed with a transgender woman. So there are those issues with housing. There's no guarantee that you're going to be housed with another girl. And there's certainly no guarantee that you're going to end up in a dorm where it's only girls. So that's very different from the picture you paint of North Carolina.

SPEAKER_04 16:39

Yeah, definitely. There's definitely, to my knowledge, there are girls like the time that they get to see each other the most is during rec time, yard time. But as far as the dorms that that folks sleep in, and depending on which facility they're in, whether it be an open style dorm or a there is one one woman that I do know who is in a cell by herself. And like the reasoning, especially for her being by herself, I don't know if you've heard of this woman. Her name is Ashley Insto here in North Carolina. She's an intersex trans woman um who has been fighting to get transferred to a women's assistant for several years, and this is how I got to know her through a press release and then connecting with her directly. But the the state essentially says that because she is quartered, her living like she has her own room and those are her living quarters, that is adequate for her to still be in a male facility. So I just but just so interesting how policy works as far as like where people get housed and especially based on gender. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 17:55

Yeah, and I can attest to the fact that the person that you're in a cell with is a big deal. I've had very bad experiences with roommates that I should never have been housed with. However, that's far from the only time that a trans woman is in any kind of danger of being sexually harassed or assaulted. So I I definitely understand why the fight continues. While it's nice to be in a room of your own, you're still housed in the male facility. And one thing you learn pretty quick around here, if people want something, they find a way to get it. And you always have to be on your lookout for that.

SPEAKER_03 18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 18:38

I'm curious if you can speak to some challenges that you face as a trans woman where you are.

SPEAKER_05 18:45

Okay, sure. So when I first came here, one of the first things they do is you meet with your classification officer and the ICT team, the interdepartmental classification team, and they issue you a pass. They issued me a pass asking me if I would like to be showered separately, or if I would like to be pad searched by females only. So this is kind of a concession that they do make for us. Unfortunately, not all of us are always carrying that pass. So if somebody wants to pad search us and it's not like super apparent that we're transgender, or if they just don't care and we don't have our pass, we may still be subject to pad search by a male officer. When we're strip searched, they do make a concession there as well. We are separated from the rest of the population. Everyone else does their little advance, we are stripped individually in the showers. So we're not forced to be exposed to everyone else in the housing area or even to one another. So that's a positive concession. On the other hand, misgendering is all over the place. We do have our dedicated shower hour. Like I said, that's like that seven o'clock count for me. But it's not always respected. If anybody else is out of their cells, it's just another opportunity for them to get to the shower. So for us, it's something that we don't like to allow a precedent to be set of that policy being watered down. If it's supposed to be separate, we want to keep it separate. And it's it's one of those situations where you have to choose your battles and you don't choose that battle with the people that you're housed with. And so we're rarely able to address it directly with those people who are disrespecting that shower hour.

SPEAKER_03 20:46

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 20:47

Other than that, like I said, it's it can be scary when you're housed in a room with somebody that you don't know who is much larger or stronger than you, who could easily overpower you. I had a bad experience at a nearby reception center. He made it clear to the officer before entering the cell that he did not want to be in the cell with me. And if he didn't want to be in with me, I don't want him to be in there with me either. But they weren't hearing it, so it wasn't even an hour before things went south. It ended up being a a week-long experience of sexual assault and no just the you come to understand how broad the definition of sexual assault is, people always immediately think of penetrative sex, but coercion to perform any other sexual act by means of implied threat of physical violence is just as much sexual assault. So you're in a two man cell, the door rolls. The police are outside the housing area and they are not going to come back inside if you start making noise. If you start making noise and you're trying to draw negative attention to the spunky and the police don't do anything, then you're even further under that threat of violence. So those are the considerations that a person has to make whenever reacting to these things. There is a PRIA policy. It originates from the federal PRIA policy, but it's not very well implemented. Often the person who makes a PRIA complaint is also put under investigation as well as the person they're complaining against. Some people have abused PRIA policy and weaponized it.

SPEAKER_01 22:46

You have one minute remaining.

SPEAKER_05 22:49

Making complaints as a way of getting back at someone or as a as some kind of reprisal. But yeah, that that gives you a little bit of an idea what the experience for me is like as a transgender woman here at Date.

SPEAKER_04 23:04

Thank you for that. Uh I definitely have some things to to say in response, but I know it's gonna cut off soon.

SPEAKER_00 23:14

This call is from a correction facility and is subject to monitoring and recording. Thank you for using Global Tell Link.

SPEAKER_05 23:22

Welcome back.

SPEAKER_04 23:23

Hey. Thanks for giving me a call back.

SPEAKER_05 23:27

No problem, sorry for so long.

SPEAKER_04 23:29

Oh no, no worries. I have to enter my number, my card information and all that jazz. So it's all good. So just want to pick back up where we had left off. You were kind of sharing with me the challenges that you have faced and just kind of giving like an overview of what it's like to be in a room with someone who doesn't want you there and not feeling safe and just the PRIA compliance. And I'm curious about how, especially pertaining to PRIA, how that policy and the way that JAF treatment, how it impacts your daily life.

SPEAKER_05 24:08

Sure. So if I go back to that incident at South Photo Reception Center, I would have loved to get out of that cell immediately. And a person on the outside might say, Well, why didn't you why didn't you go and tell the police about it the next day? Why did you put up with that for a whole week? And the answer is that there is no guarantee that the police will respond appropriately. They may not feel that your complaint is justified or may not believe you. And it will get back to a person that you went to the police. And so if they don't respond appropriately, there's a reasonable fear that a person has with respect to whether or not they're going to report an incident or not. They can actually make a bad situation even worse if there is not an appropriate response. And that was the worst experience I ever had, but it wasn't the only bad experience I ever had. There's a lot of romance that goes on in here between the regular population and the transgender population. We have a tendency to bring people out of the woodwork. So here is A, just about everyone is out of the woodwork. So everyone's coupled up, and I I identify as a lesbian. I'm mostly predominantly my attraction is to women. But I tried dating. And I remember in one case, I was dating someone who in the beginning seemed really charming, really sweet, like kind of groofy, maybe talked about themselves a little bit too much. But other than that, pretty nice person, interested in some of the same things. And it was months before we even kissed, and there was like no sexual contact. It wasn't until like eight months later that we moved into a room together because we're entering the same program. And and I'm sure they made sure that happened now, like that was arranged. But the person completely changed once we were roommates, and there's a certain power that somebody has over you when that door closes and they know that you can't go anywhere. When they know that you're not going to make noise because you're afraid of what might happen if you do. And so things begin to go south. And I've learned from my experiences. I'm really content to stay single now. I've even kind of given up on dating women because most of the women here are after men. But yeah, I just I can relate to people who fall into a bad situation. My best friend is one of them, also in a room, but despite wanting to leave, her boyfriend will not let her leave. And there is physical abuse, and there is nothing she can do about it until he leaves the compound. And I just have to hope that if and when that happens, she doesn't get into another situation that lands her in the same place.

SPEAKER_03 27:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 27:19

That's gotta be really scary on one end, knowing that when that door closes, like it's just you and that person, and so in those moments, I'm curious what are some of the ways that you keep yourself safe?

SPEAKER_05 27:36

Well, your your options are limited, right? So the whole reason I did put up with that for a week was because there was that implied threat of violence. I was not attracted to this person. I did not like the way they smelled. I did not like the Molly cigarettes that they were continually smoking. I would never have chosen of my own free will to perform oral sex from them every night for a week. I that was not that was not something I wanted to do. I felt like the alternative could have been worse. Like you start rejecting this person, and maybe they want more for me than just oral sex. Maybe now they put me in a position where they're going to take what they want. There there was one night he like climbed up into my bed and I'm like pretending to be super drowsy, like I'm falling asleep, and and he's like, Well, I'm just gonna hold you tonight. And I'm like, that's so much better. That's such a better alternative. But he didn't just hold me, he brought up my body and began like entering my mouth without my like participation. So that is that was what happened, but what I feared could happen. Say I am seen talking to the police about an incident. If they don't respond, he beats me in the cell. That's the sort of thing that can take place. I begin to try to reject him, he decides to beat me, and forcefully sexually assault me, penetration, whatever he wants, I'm under his power. I'm 5'5, above 40, and he's like 6'1 and probably 190, maybe 200. He was much taller than me. And but that's why there's supposed to be a a comparison between two people's classification level, their weight, their height, their the length of their sentence, their housing level, security level, all that is supposed to be compared. And the two of us shouldn't have even been in a cell together. He, I believe, had a life sentence, and I was on a green case, but with a maximum of 30 years, and of those 30 years, I had at most 13 left to do. So we should never have been in a cell together. But those kinds of things do happen. We slip through the cracks, and unfortunately, we're made less safe as a result.

SPEAKER_04 30:12

Yeah. Are there any moments when you do feel this like when do you feel the safest?

SPEAKER_03 30:19

When I feel less? When do you the safest? Yeah, the safest.

SPEAKER_05 30:24

Well, you do get lucky sometimes. I'm in a a community called peer-to-peer. Peer-to-peer is an inmate kind of run housing area where we kind of police ourselves, we have structure, we have expectations and rules. There are roles that people take on, different departments that people can be a part of. Um an obligation to contribute and to be an active participant uh in classes or in cleaning up the dorm or in even attending the evening meeting. Those are all things that build community. And when you're in an environment where you're building community, people see you as another person. Not just Rain, the transgender, but Rain, the girl in chew that helps that helps this guy with his homework, or who gets up there and reads inspirational messages, who helps with the movies. I become more than just my gender identity by virtue of the nature of this environment, the community-based nature of this environment. So a dormitory environment like this can make me feel safer. At the same time, I am super lucky to have a good roommate right now. He's about my height, he's got a bit more time than me, but we're both from the same town, and he's just shown himself to be a remarkably normal person. He's never tried to hint at any kind of like sexual contact or anything. He has allowed the room that I live in to be the safest place for me. And that's not always the case. So I'm super grateful for that right now.

SPEAKER_04 32:11

I'm glad you have that right now, and I hope it stays that way. That you know, what whatever your living situation is that folks deserve to be safe and where they sleep at night. That's the most vulnerable place to be in, is in sleeping quarters. Um and you spoke a little bit about um community, and I'm curious of like how how do you receive care from community inside? And also how do you give care?

SPEAKER_03 32:39

How do you build it? How do you connect to it? How do you receive care?

SPEAKER_05 32:45

Sure. Okay, so community can take many forms. When you first come to prison, I think one of the the worst things that society does is sever people so completely from community. Those ties that bind your friends and family, your your worth, your education, your hobbies, all that's gone right away. So it's an isolating experience in the beginning. And you come into a place and you don't know anybody, or you might, but you only know them within the context of previous incarceration or jail experience, and you feel alone despite the fact that you're surrounded by 80 people in your dorm or whatever. So that's where things begin. But community can be found, and I have found it by reaching out to people that are out there. I've established a lot of really positive community contacts outside this place. I've contacted other advocacy organizations that worked with the trans and LGBTQ population, really powerful queer advocates, prison abolitionism movements, prison correspondence organizations, religious organizations, creative writing, all of these things are opportunities for us to build community. Even at one point, just sending letters to a newsletter so that my letter could be shared with other people reading the newsletter and I could read theirs. And though we might never meet one another, I'm able to relate to them and commiserate with them. And so we're separated, I can share their joy or share their pain. And it seems very abstract the way I describe it, but it means something. You feel less alone because you know there are people like you going through the same thing. There is community in person here in a facility, but you have to find it. And a lot of people find that in faith-based organizations. They'll go to chapel and participate in religious service or mockful religious services, and eventually that becomes their home. That becomes their community, or one of them. I'm also a part of the Gabble Club here, the Toastmasters Club. And for only like 35, 40 members strong, but that also is a small community. We get to know one another, we support one another, we help one another, learn and grow. That also is community. And then, like I described, in this dorm, this is like a special dorm. This is built with that community-based model. But even in other dorms, you might find a circle of friends. There might be like five or six girls in that dorm, and you can talk with them and kind of click up a little bit. And it's not as strong a sense of community as something more intentional, but it still makes a person feel less alone.

SPEAKER_04 35:49

I'm curious if you could speak to me about um like what uh out what outside community what kind of support feels the most like or sort of thing?

SPEAKER_05 36:02

I'm sorry, you're breaking up a little bit on me. Can you hear me okay?

SPEAKER_04 36:06

Yep, I can hear you.

SPEAKER_05 36:07

Okay, good. Honestly, for me, one of the worst things about coming to prison is that being so completely cut off. I'm a parent of four children, but I'm not really actively in their lives. I'm a trained network engineer, but I'm not able to use my professional skills. I'm a public speaker who doesn't often have an audience. It's this inability to feel like you have anything of meaning to contribute anymore, like you don't matter anymore. And that is just soul deadening. Like it just kills you inside to feel like you don't matter to anyone or anything anymore. So organizations that I've become a part of, like the Alyssa Rodriguez Center for Gender Justice or the Prisoner Correspondence Project, they have given me a place in the organization, the Inside Collective with PTP, or as an advisory board member of the of art. And I'm able to contribute all of a sudden. I'm able to share my ideas and share my feedback and be part of fundraising efforts and help guide the direction of an organization that's fighting for people just like me. That is enormous to me. Doing the same thing inside, finding opportunities to advocate, that also really matters. But like I have spent a long time trying to rebuild those threads, those ties that bind me to the outside world. Those ties, those connections are what remind me that while this is where I am, this is not who I am. While this is where I am, this place does not need to confine all of me. That my spirit, my writing, my intention, my will, they can all leave the gates as long as I have uh the resources to to get out there. And after many years of trying to build those community connections, I do have those resources and I'm really grateful for that. That's amazing.

SPEAKER_04 38:24

I'm so glad you have that. And you know, even just the the the mindset that you are in right now. I'm I'm where everything isn't you're not always in a great positive mood. Like things and then that's the same for where wherever people are, there is a spectrum of feelings and experiences that we go through. And I'm curious what what gives you hope or keeps you grounded.

SPEAKER_05 38:52

Okay, sure. I think that I described how busy my day can be, how full my life can be, having things in my life to look forward to, um, having purpose that I find in the organizations I'm a part of, or my inside and outside advocacy efforts, my contribution in the support group, tutoring inside the dorm, really the the recognition for me that being part of a community is a choice. And the choice isn't a passive one. We're called to be active parts of our community. If the community means something to us, then we ought to be protective of it. And so that protective instinct and nature also grounds me because it reminds me that when I do something, it reflects my whole community. I'm not just brain, I'm also Rayne the member of the transgender community, the member of the peer-to-peer community, vice president of education of the Gabble Club, that girl that was in the sit last month. But that the things that give me meaning are I'm a reflection of them. So I feel like I have an obligation to always put my best foot forward so that I don't hurt those things that have given me and other people meaning.

SPEAKER_04 40:20

Yeah, I love what you're saying and even you know how accountable you are to community and whether it's a community inside and outside. It's something quite beautiful that you have built. And when like I think a big part of my wanting to amplify stories of incarcerated trans people, I really want people to hear their voice, hear them say what it is that's going on and what they experience. And so I'm curious what is the most important thing you want the public to understand about trans people who are incarcerated.

SPEAKER_05 41:00

Sure. So the most important people I want you to, and one thing I want you to understand about people in general that are incarcerated is that there are really no different than people on the outside. There are people that love us, we hope, and who we love. We cultivate friendships, we experience heartbreak, we have aspirations, goals, dreams, we have struggles with mental health, we have challenges in different endeavors like education. We need help and aren't always willing to ask for it. No, we struggle with personality defects that have gotten us here. We're not in an environment that actually has anything to do with corrections, though that's the name of the department, and yet we want to correct ourselves because we want to be part of the world again. Most of us recognize that we were removed from society for a reason. We, for the most part, want to give society a reason to want us to be part of it again. So the trans community is just a community of people who happen to be trans. I often tell people, my name is Rain Violet, and my transgender identity is the least interesting thing I can tell you about myself. While it's like the only thing that some people notice about me, it's really just my gender identity. And once you get past that, you're able to see everything else that a person is. Yes, my struggles may be unique to my community in the incarcerated environment. There are considerations that are different, uh, a transgender woman in a male institution, but at the end of the day, all of us are people experiencing some of the same struggles. That's why in environments like this, where we are able to develop community, I think it's wonderful that people eventually see me as more than just a transgender woman. And they get over their reluctance to interact with a trans girl and they open themselves up to interacting with Rain. And I love that. So that that's it. We we need love and support on the inside, just like people need love and support on the outside. And if you are physically inclined, we are the least of these. If you are socially inclined, we are the people that they spoke of that you could judge a nation, a conscience by the way they treat those who are incarcerated. So on the outside, even when I was on probation, I still spent time trying to contribute to this incarcerated community. And if you're out there, you're free. I hope you never have to experience. any of this, the food's really terrible. But I want you to know that if you are in here and I'm out there, I'm going to be one of those people that wants to provide you support. I hope very much that when you hear stories of people like me, that you see that as an invitation to provide support to us. Because an amazing thing will happen when you extend yourself inside the fence. When you reach out to one of us and you write us or talk to us on the phone and you get to know us and you discover the the humanity of the people inside the fence that we ought not be out of sight and out of mind. Especially now when you consider that the vast majority of us will be coming back home to the streets. And give us a reason to care about you all again. Create some of those community connections that can nourish a person and keep them grounded as they transition from the environment in here back out there.

SPEAKER_04 45:08

Well thank you for that I just have another one last question. What are the pressures that actually make a difference?

SPEAKER_05 45:17

In here? Yeah. So there is a huge population of people who are advocating for prison abolitionism. That's a movement and that's part of what I'm involved with too. It's the idea that this current model of incarceration does not work. We can look at what's happening across the pond of the Atlantic Ocean and we can see what's working in Norway and Denmark even in other states and how much lower their recidivism rates are, how much lower their their rate of reoffending of the recidivism. And so we know this is a crazy thing. We know how to fix the things that are broken. We know what works and what doesn't prison abolitionism movements are trying to get us closer to that space. Closely related are prison reform organizations. They recognize that prison is probably a reality that's not going anywhere. The best they can do is try to mind the conditions that are inside, making sure that it remains a humanitarian place, a humane place rather that that it's healthy and that hygiene items are prepared, that educational opportunities are available, that abuse is being limited or addressed properly, that sexual misconduct is being addressed properly sorts of things that prison reform people are looking at. Criminal justice reform on the other hand is that bit of advocacy where people are working on changing the way people are punished. In particular a lot of criminal justice reform organizations want to limit these super long sentences. We find that the longer a person is incarcerated, the more influence this incarcerated environment has on that person. In other words, the longer I'm here the better a criminal I become the longer I've had to practice criminal behavior the longer I've had to internalize a criminal mindset of just trying to get away with it. If they don't see it, I I've slid. So that's criminal justice reform one key point there if you go to any of the 50 states and you look at the same the same crime and you look at the sentences associated with that same crime you'll find that the sentences vary remarkably there's this whole ridiculous spectrum so there should be some kind of standard. You know we should kind of know what to expect when a person is found guilty of an offense. But even within the same state even within the state of Florida depending on what judicial district you're in or what county the sentences aren't even the same here. So that's something that we have an advocacy space for is we have we have our clear advocacy there you know obviously a population of those of us who are transgender the a population of those of us who are part of the LGBTQ community you have one minute remaining. There are organizations that provide that solidarity and understanding educational resources and that is enormously helpful for a vulnerable and often isolated community. I know I've gotten a lot of value out of that. So I hope that was a good 30,000 foot view of some of the different realms of advocacy that are relevant