Transgender women won’t have to live alongside other men while serving time at Rikers Island anymore, the city’s Department of Correction announced Tuesday.

Starting this week, these prisoners — who were born male but identify as female — will have the voluntary opportunity to move into a transgender housing unit that’s separate and safe from the rest of the prison population.

“Because inmates are not all alike, the department is creating specialized housing for many specific inmate groups,” DOC Commissioner Joe Ponte said.

“Just as adolescents, young adults, and mentally ill inmates have specialized needs, so do men who identify as women.”

Transgender inmates will also be provided with medical and mental-health care as needed.

The voluntary unit will start out with 30 beds — enough to house the roughly 30 to 35 transgender women behind bars at any given time.

Mariah Lopez, the executive director of the Strategic Trans Alliance for Radical Reform, called it the country’s “first exclusively transgender inmate facility.”