This Tennessee prison is leaving LGBTQ people unhoused behind bars

This story was originally published on Truthout on Feb. 16, 2026. It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) license.

In the United States, it is possible to be unhoused even inside a prison. At the South Central Correctional Center in Tennessee, people sleep in doorways, closets, or even in the showers. “Anywhere that’s pretty much off camera,” said Bishop, a man imprisoned in the facility who chose not to use his last name out of fear of retaliation.

Atticus, another man in the prison, told Truthout he knows at least a couple people living within the prison “who are actually homeless on a more permanent basis, people bouncing around from place to place.” These folks have no bed to sleep in at night, and no place to leave their belongings.

Sources imprisoned at South Central described a different sort of housing crisis, one that takes place inside the walls of the institution that is charged with providing for them. The prison is run by CoreCivic, and, like other CoreCivic prisons in Tennessee, has been the subject of recent investigations because of the rampant violence and extortion that gang members in the prison perpetrate on newer or unaffiliated people. LGBTQ+ people in the prison say this violence often targets them specifically.

Conditions at South Central are just one example of the broader problem that LGBTQ+ people face inside prisons, particularly around housing issues. Although prisons claim to take seriously the safety of the people they confine — CoreCivic’s website highlights that they operate “safe facilities” — the people inside tell a very different story.

Instead, people inside are organizing to protect themselves. Bishop and Atticus are both part of an LGBTQ+ group called Be the Change, which has about 35-40 members in the prison. Be the Change is fighting within the facility for the ability to ensure that LGBTQ+ people are housed safely, setting an example for prisoner organizing nationwide.

The “Pod” System

Contemporary prisons in the United States are generally arranged into several sub-units. Within these large institutions, prisons are subdivided into units and what are known as “pods.” According to prison architects, pods offer a “pie-shape” (as opposed to a straight line of cells) and foster both community and more efficient oversight. People living within a pod together share a common room and other daily living activities, and resident experiences in different pods within the same prison can be very different.

At South Central, units have two pods, each with 60 two-person cells. Two units in particular, Columbia and Discovery, are notorious for being chaotic, violent, and controlled by gangs. The culture of the pod is not only important for a person’s everyday well-being, but when it comes to pods and especially cellmates, it is a critical matter of physical safety as well.

“It’s difficult enough dealing with being locked up on your own, but when you have to go home at night to a little bitty box with someone who you do not get along with, that just makes it all the more complicated.”

“It’s difficult enough dealing with being locked up on your own, but when you have to go home at night to a little bitty box with someone who you do not get along with, that just makes it all the more complicated,” said Atticus, who has faced harassment over his bisexual identity.

Having a bad cellmate can be dangerous, even life threatening. Tavaria “Varia” Merritt, a trans woman also imprisoned at South Central, says she has often been called to offer support for LGBTQ+ people after sexual assaults in the prison, including for folks at risk of suicide.

Safety is a major concern for everyone in prison, but LGBTQ+ people face unique and heightened risks. Department of Justice statistics show trans people in prison experience sexual violence at more than 12 times the rate of other people in prison. Physical violence, too, is elevated. And LGBTQ+ people are also locked up at higher rates.

Alex, a program facilitator for Be the Change who is pansexual, says the fear from being in a bad pod or having a bad cellmate deeply impacts quality of life for people like him. Describing his own struggle arriving to the prison a year ago and feeling targeted, he says the fights and close calls make you wonder how many chances you have left before something is fatal.

“That’s quite a bit of dread to live with,” Alex told Truthout, describing loss of appetite from the depression. He says constant mistreatment from anti-queer podmates “makes you feel like less than a person.”

Queer Folks Strive to Protect Each Other

Into the gap left by CoreCivic steps Be the Change. The group is impressive in its scope, holding weekly meetings organized under the umbrella of the Unitarian Universalist church and organizing a wide variety of classes, including crochet and music, that support LGBTQ+ people in exploring their identities, finding kin, and building community.

The group organizes meals together and holds large events, like its 10^th anniversary celebration in July 2025, with speakers and guests from both inside and outside the prison community. Be the Change’s founder Merritt speaks regularly at trainings for prison staff about the needs of LGBTQ people inside.

Merritt and Be the Change are a powerful force at South Central mitigating the effects of the chaotic institution on LGBTQ+ people in the facility. Several members spoke to Truthout about how their housing crises were resolved by the group’s advocacy.

On his first day in the prison, Atticus says he went to the cell he was assigned by administration. When he got there, his new cellmate, who was gang-affiliated, simply told him he wasn’t living there. In gang-controlled areas of the prison, it’s common practice to demand “rent” from any unaffiliated people.

“So I was pounding the pavement trying to find a place to live,” he narrates. “And that’s when I ran into Varia and Be the Change. And they got on that problem so quickly, it surprised me. She moved heaven and Earth to find a place for this complete stranger, me. And by the end of the night, I had somewhere to lay my head and I’ve been there ever since.”

Some Be the Change members, Merritt says, have been sent to solitary confinement after refusing to accept a cell assignment with someone who was openly hostile to LGBTQ+ people. When she talked to Truthout, Merritt estimated there were five or six people in the hole (another term for solitary) for this reason.

In story after story, Be the Change members describe a complete lack of help from staff in the prison for housing problems. Bishop points out that 134 people “count out” — a form of attendance taking — within his pod at the end of the day, which only has a capacity of 120, indicating the problem is no secret to guards.

Victor, a gay man and vice president of Be the Change, says staff would “deliberately put people who they knew would have problems with me” in his cell.

Atticus describes this as a tension between bureaucratic reality and material reality, which are often “completely divorced.” Staff, says Atticus, are generally only concerned with making sure that “bureaucratic reality” makes sense. As long as things look good on paper, staff seem unconcerned about the conditions people are living in.

Sources also report rampant theft of their belongings from inside their cells, and believe this is accomplished with help from guards letting people into the cell and ignoring who lives there and who doesn’t.

Worse than indifference, Victor, a gay man and vice president of Be the Change, says when he arrived to South Central before Be the Change’s founding, what he experienced was an “institutional level of homophobia.” He says at that time staff would “deliberately put people who they knew would have problems with me” in his cell.

PREA Is Insufficient and Even Aggravates the Problem

In prisons across the U.S., LGBTQ+ people struggle with the danger that a hostile cellmate can present. Many have advocated for and sometimes worked with the wardens of their facilities to create LGBTQ+-specific pods to reduce this danger and create an environment that is less hostile to trans women and queer men, which is what Merritt says she’d like to see at South Central. Just as often, it seems, prison administrators determine that an LGBTQ+-specific unit or pod is discriminatory. Specifically designated pods in a prison also make it harder to fill the entire prison to capacity.

Merritt says Be the Change negotiated a policy at their facility called “Cell with Care” that mandated trans people be placed following a specific consultation process to ensure a smoother match. Recently, however, Merritt says the facility has stopped following it, and it is unclear why. (Truthout attempted to obtain a copy of this policy but did not receive timely responses from either the Tennessee Department of Correction or CoreCivic during the course of reporting.)

The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) is supposed to mitigate some of these risks, particularly the increased risk of sexual victimization, by offering a set of guidelines that includes rules around with whom people can be housed and when they must be consulted. According to Advocates for Trans Equality, PREA standards indicate that “LGBT people may be housed in separated, dedicated housing units only if such placement is voluntary or is based on a case-by-case assessment that includes other factors; if the unit also houses other groups of vulnerable individuals; or if the unit was established as part of the resolution of a lawsuit to protect LGBT people.”

Prism reports that the Trump administration issued a memo on December 2, 2025, ordering auditors to ignore key PREA standards related to trans and intersex people. The legal status of these changes is still undetermined, but PREA is already a deeply flawed source of support for LGBTQ+ people. Particularly problematic is that queer and trans people are more likely to be criminalized with sex offenses because of anti-queer biases prior to coming to prison as well as inside of it.

Merritt says Be the Change negotiated a policy at their facility called “Cell with Care” that mandated trans people be placed following a specific consultation process to ensure a smoother match. Recently, however, Merritt says the facility has stopped following it.

PREA is also liable to be used in a retaliatory manner by fellow people in prison as well as by staff. Be the Change members explain that everyone inside has a “PREA compatibility status” of either victim, aggressor, or neutral. These statuses determine who can be housed together; for example, a victim cannot be housed with an aggressor. While this may seem to be protective, Victor told Truthout, “I think the worst thing you can have as far as your PREA status is being a victim, because it’s so difficult to find a roommate.”

These statuses lend themselves to being weaponized. Victor says that in some cases, he and others have awoken in the morning to find their status changed overnight, without warning and for no apparent reason. These changes disturb the housing situations that people have been able to find for themselves.

In interviews with Truthout, sources at South Central implied that people do not want to name that they’ve been sexually assaulted because it will complicate their housing situation.

Self-Organization Can Only Go So Far Within the Carceral System

Be the Change and self-organized groups like it in prisons across the United States are finding ways to care for themselves and others, as the state refuses to house and care for those it has forced into its custody.

Be the Change members emphasize how lucky they feel to have found Merritt and her group. “I’m safe and I don’t have to worry about these things that other people have to worry about because I know that I have a community who cares about me,” Atticus said of his struggle to find safer housing within the prison.

“I started this to form a safe haven for those who will be considered prey in prison,” said Merritt. “Forming [Be the Change] has changed so many lives for the better. The constant fears of being raped and the constant fears of being assaulted and abused by other inmates and staff … that has been replaced with friendships and the ability to live an authentic life even behind the bars.”

Victor, who has been part of the group since the beginning, highlighted how Be the Change has successfully changed the culture at South Central in the last 10 years. But he also named some of the difficulties of doing this kind of work from within a system that is organized by violence from top to bottom. Sometimes, he said, Be the Change’s attempts to work in respectful ways makes it even harder for them to assert their dignity without violence.

Ultimately the group can’t solve housing problems without at least some cooperation from the prison. Rather than asking for more support from the prison, Merritt and Be the Change are asking for the prison to simply follow its own stated policies and to allow the group to do the work it is already doing.

Within a context where the group’s work is constantly derailed, Be the Change stands out as an example of how people in prison struggle to care for each other.

Angela Henderson, a member of Southerners on New Ground who supports Be the Change from the outside, said, “I think the conditions are just getting more and more scary … but at the same time, they’re still like finding ways to still be Be the Change. Holding the potlucks and making sure everyone’s needs are met.”