LGBTQ people are incarcerated at a rate three times higher than the general population. But when they're released from prison, experts and advocates say many reentry programs fail to meet their unique needs, with traditional reentry housing leaving them susceptible to harassment. Among the most vulnerable are transwomen. 

Joss Green, assistant professor of sociology, studied reentry programs in the San Francisco Bay Area. 

"No transwomen that I formally interviewed or met in the course of my field research wanted to or felt safe in men's housing programs," says Green.

He found that many women's shelters admitted cisgender women—people whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth—but excluded most transwomen.

"They were disbelieved as to really being women," Green says. "For the [trans] women that were able to enter these programs, there were then a series of other challenges connected to the harassment they could experience both from cisgender women in the program and from the staff themselves."

Listen to the full interview via PBS NewsHour (Greene's interview begins at 35:36).