Roxie Ellis, wearing a navy blue, male-issue jail uniform, is surrounded by men in a low-security pod of the downtown Denver jail. But a blue card stuck to her bunk says she prefers the pronouns “she” and “her,” and wants guards to call her Roxie — not the “government name” on her booking sheet. The blue card, which inmates can carry in their pockets or attach to their cells, is part of a Denver Sheriff Department policy for transgender detainees that has become a model copied by jails nationwide.

The policy was among the few positive things cited in a recent outside review of the troubled sheriff’s office. A consultants’ review, which made 277 recommendations for change, was ordered by Mayor Michael Hancock in 2014 after a string of excessive-force cases.

Transgender inmates in Denver can fill out a “statement of preference form,” including a preferred name and preferred pronouns, regardless of legal name change or whether they’ve undergone gender-reassignment surgery.

After booking, inmates who identify as transgender are segregated from the rest of the jail population for 72 hours while a “transgender review board,” consisting of sheriff’s staffers and a community member, recommends where to house the offender. Housing — either in the male or female section of the jail — is not solely determined “based on the inmates’ birth sex, identity documents or physical anatomy,” according to the eight-page policy.

The Denver County jail typically has about a half-dozen transgender inmates at one time. The annual number of bookings for inmates who identify as transgender has increased significantly since the policy took effect — from 172 in 2012 to more than 300 in each of the past two years. So far, though, all of them have been housed in a pod that matches their physical sex, usually because that’s what they request.

The reasons vary, but for many transgender inmates, their latest jail stint is not their first and they prefer to stick to the side they know.

A few transgender women have requested female housing, but those requests were denied because of the nature of their criminal activity. A transgender woman with male genitalia and a rap sheet that includes sexual assault, for example, cannot reside with female inmates for safety reasons, according to the sheriff’s policy.

The document, dated June 2012, also specifies that transgender inmates are allowed to have private showers, can request to share cells with other transgender inmates, and can choose whether they want a male or female guard to search them if necessary.

Courtney Gray, transgender programs manager for the GLBT Community Center of Colorado, and other leaders in the transgender community helped craft the policy during a sometimes-painful, often-intense year and a half of two-hour meetings every other week.

Before the policy, jail employees were using outdated vocabulary, said sheriff’s Maj. Paul Oliva, chairman of the task force that wrote it. Officers now are taught that gender identity is “an individual’s internal, personal sense of their own gender,” no matter their “birth-assigned” gender or whether they have had surgery.

The policy — and the collaborative way it was developed — was so successful that it has become one of two models recommended by the National Institute of Corrections. Oliva and Gray are considered “subject matter experts” who train other jails across the country seeking to deal with an increasingly visible segment of the jail population. Almost one in six transgender people have been incarcerated, much higher than the rate among the general population, according to the National Center for Transgender Equality.

“We’ve made sure that people can be housed by their gender identity and not necessarily their genitalia,” said Gray, a transgender woman. “Because if you have someone who looks like me that hasn’t had surgery and you use that old system of housing by genitalia, and you put me in with boys, I can tell you how that turns out. It’s not pretty. We are putting trans people in danger by doing that.”

But Roxie Ellis, a 31-year-old who came out as transgender at age 16, requested male housing because the men are “sweet and nice,” for the most part, although there are a few who don’t understand her. She heard it was “harsh” in female housing.

The guards who know Ellis use female pronouns, and almost all of them call her by her last name, which she likes because “it sounds like Alice.” She would rather wear the striped female jail garb, but that request was denied because she needed to match the rest of her pod, she said. “That’s OK. I look good in anything I wear,” said Ellis in an interview from jail.

Ellis, who has thin, well-manicured eyebrows, a bald head and a Texas accent, is allowed to take daily estrogen and testosterone-blocking pills, which are covered by Medicaid government insurance. They help her grow breasts, as well as keep her skin smooth and her voice lighter.

Ellis, jailed for trespassing and disturbing the peace at Denver Health medical center, ran away from home in Dallas as a teenager because her stepfather didn’t accept that she was transgender. “I had to sacrifice my relationship with my family for who I wanted to be,” she said.

Her life has been a struggle, recently a mess of methamphetamine and homelessness.

When Ellis leaves jail in August, she hopes to stay clean, find an apartment and get a job through the Empowerment Program for disadvantaged women. She said she feels the community, in and out of the jail, has become more accepting of transgender people in the past few years.

“It’s who I am,” she said. “I can’t change it.”

Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593, jenbrown@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jbrowndpost