Origins

This is not the blog my mother envisioned me writing someday. And it’s a blog I wish I didn’t feel I needed to start. No one wants to tell their family, friends, and coworkers that they spent the summer in the Dane County Jail. But underneath that lies a lot of different stories. And while it might be difficult to publicly open up about something that most people would try to hide, I feel it is absolutely crucial to share as much as I can regarding my experiences this summer, so no other transgender person ever faces the same.

I was nearly drowned in the sheer volume of almost incomprehensible story lines playing out at once. How the hell did I get there? I was a Madison police officer for 8 years. A two-time Ironman finisher. A dual major college graduate. In all honesty, there’s still a lot of things about this experience that I don’t fully understand; or maybe I do, but am still desperately hoping to be wrong. The world as I know it, as it pertains to human rights and dignity, the criminal justice system, the police, and the current standing of LGBT individuals in society, has been turned on its head. I have a very different view of the world now than I’ve had for 36 years.

There’s such an immense amount of information that needs to be brought into the light. So much so that it took me weeks following my release from the Dane County Jail to even begin to put into words what happened. Words I had spent hours upon hours agonizing over, in a cell the size of a small closet where I was confined alone for 23 hours a day.

So that’s where I will start; in solitary confinement, aka“seg.” Usually these small holding cells are meant for individuals who are inebriated, intoxicated, combative, or suicidal to be held in for less than 24 hours. An extremely small 6’x8’ cell, where the lights never dim, where the cement walls are built so thick that you can scream and nobody will hear you, where the door is made of thick metal with only a small slot that opens three times a day for a meal tray to be slid in. Where everything you own in the world consists of what you’re wearing (maybe, when not stripped naked for “safety”), a mattress more comparable to a sandbag, a cement slab, a toilet, and a sink. There are no books, no pencil, no paper, no music, no sound, no other human beings. While staying in seg, you can expect to receive no commissary, no visitations, no mail, and no programming offered in the rest of the jail. You will never go outside or even see a window to remind you the world still exists beyond your walls. You do not bathe or shower, you do not speak to anyone, nor are you spoken to. You effectively exist as an object placed in a room designed for total and complete sensory deprivation.

I found my way into seg at the Dane County Jail because I was told, “We don’t currently have any suitable housing options for you.” My name is Eli, and I’m a transgender man. In my case, the result of “nothing suitable” for a transgender individual would ultimately be 46 days housed in the conditions described above, in solitary confinement.

Behind all this, there’s a lot of unbelievable background regarding the reasons that placed me in contact with the police and in the jail. But if you’ve come here looking for all the exciting details of that particular part of the story, you’ve unfortunately come to the wrong place, or at least at the wrong time. The current reality is I have open cases and I need to lend caution towards speaking openly about them for the present moment. There may come a time down the road when I am able to begin openly sharing. For the time being, that needs to remain a one-on-one conversation rather than a public post. For now, there’s one distinct priority. Of most concern to me is the possibility that another transgender individual may enter the Dane County Jail and be put through the same conditions I experienced.

This is the city of Madison, Wisconsin, a self-proclaimed “sanctuary City for transgender people.”. Madison was the first in the entire nation, in fact, to vote to title itself as such. Allow me to be the first to say that that sanctuary, if it ever existed, very firmly ends at the doors of the Dane County Jail, where existing while trans gains you a one-way-ticket to a literal living hell.

The Dane County Jail needs immediate emergency reform regarding their treatment of transgender inmates. Forget this expectation of a sanctuary city. Set the bar at minimally ethical and humane. Set the expectation at “legal” at a federal and state level. The Dane County Jail, namely the individuals operating it, are clearly in need of a very serious educational and ethical realignment when it comes to how they treat transgender people.

This blog will paint a clearer picture of what exactly happened inside that jail this summer. From the outside looking in, surely it is sometimes difficult to take the word of a stranger on the internet sharing some fantastical tale of mistreatment; all while they themselves are facing consequences for (alleged) shortcomings in their own judgment and perception. I am not tone deaf to the immediate credibility toll that the subject matter itself lends to anyone willing to speak about it. However, that fact alone makes those experiencing it perhaps most vulnerable. Nowhere else will you enter a setting where society believes you, trusts you, cares about your well-being or sympathizes with you less than your time behind bars. And this is the local jail, where you stay when you haven’t been convicted of a single crime and are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Yet, I spent 8 years as a police officer, sometimes cursing the criminal intake forms I would receive back, notifying me that a recent arrest had been released from jail on what never seemed like enough in terms of negative consequences. Signature bonds for violent offenses, people bailing out of jail before I even finished the report on it, low cash bail. It all amounted to a very negative view of criminal justice in Dane County. But when you’re the one making the arrest, it’s hard to see past your perception of who the criminal is and their actions immediately prior to their arrest. What gets missed in a short investigation is huge amounts of context, history, emotions, relationships, secrets and in some cases, politics.

Previously, my role in this process effectively ended as any arrestee was led from booking into the actual Dane County Jail. What happened in between that moment and whatever participation in court I would become a part of was irrelevant to me.  That isn’t an uncommon problem.  The police don’t understand what happens in jail, what jail actually does to change people, and in many cases, that incarceration in its current state, in many parts of the country and for many people, is inhumane.  And it’s easy to become frustrated with what seems like lax consequences when you don’t understand what it feels like each day to no longer participate in the world around you. 

I lived in the local jail of a city that literally proclaims itself a “sanctuary” for someone like me. If I’m being totally honest, I’m not sure I have a clear picture in my head of what a sanctuary would actually look like….

….but I bet it would take less than a month and a half to get a bar of soap and a toothbrush.