This policy was revised and updated and published in August 2019. You can read the full policy 👉   Here  

This was revised after more than one high profile case of male rapists operating in the female estate.  There is no explicit reference to the cases, in the policy, though they do include  a warning about staff leaking information to the media.

A new policy is due to be published 31st October 2019 so I will revisit to note the amendments made.   I have also emailed the Ministry of Justice to ask if there is a specific policy on the care of female prisoners.  I have also asked  what protocols are in place for a female prisoner who is moved to the male estate, because they are deemed too dangerous for the women’s facilities.

The policy exposes how far  the, legally protected, characteristic of sex has been eroded, by allowing anyone, regardless of biology, to declare they are a woman. The prison system is illustrative of just how far Gender Identity ideology is  embedded within our legislature and enshrined in public policy.

Below is a quote 👇 from James Morton, of the Scottish Trans Alliance, which shows that Female prisoners are the subjects of a  dangerous laboratory experiment.  James is listed as an author of the Scottish Prisons Policy which deals with Transgender Prisoners. As James is a lobbyist for Trans Rights there is only one group at the forefront of the policy.  Spoiler.  Its not Women.

‘We strategized – we strategized – that by working intensively with the Scottish Prison Service to support them to include trans women as women on a self-declaration basis within very challenging circumstances, we would be able to ensure that all other public services should be able to do likewise’.

The above quote  is illustrative of a complete disregard for the female prison population;  one of the most vulnerable groups in our society.  Domestic violence refuges, rape crisis centres and female prisons do seem to figure prominently in the targeted locations. Captive females are being targeted  for this new branch of Men’s rights activism.

The new MOJ policy starts out well.  At least it recognises  the need for balance between the protected characteristic of “sex” and “Gender Reassignment”. Specifically they refer to women’s prisons not, you will notice, men’s prisons.  They know any conflict impacts women. 

The important legal issue here is that someone who has a Gender Recognition Certificate, is deemed to be “legally” of the opposite sex. Thus a Male to Female Transexual (MTF) or a Female to Male (FTM) is  deemed to be legally a woman/man, respectively. (Note: This does NOT mean that only post-operative transsexuals are able to be legally declared as the opposite sex. Gender Recognition Certificates (GRCs) have already been issued to male-bodied people).

The policy also includes this quote: Unbeknown to, I would guess, 99% of women, the UK legal system has endorsed the idea of #LadyPenis.  Not one single women I have told about this, in real life, had any idea the state has declared that a male, complete with penis, can be legally defined as a woman. Once I had overcome their disbelief, they were, to a woman,  horrified. This is not a grass roots movement, its top down, elite led, and mandated by a political class who have been lobbied into submission. Crucially those who enact the law, and draft the guidance, will not be on the front line. They will not be tasked with enforcing the policy, in real life, or on the receiving end when, inevitably, it places women and children at risk.

The  Prisons policy has to operate on the basis of the law. The interpretation of the law is such that  a person who holds a GRC is , legally, woman/man and to be housed according to their “legal gender”.  (A lot of the debate uses Gender & Sex interchangeably. This is no accident. It obfuscates. Whenever you are reassured by a policy. Stop. Ask how they are defining gender, sex and woman. )

*A CCB is a Complex Case Board.

Since there are less than 5000 GRCs granted (last time I checked) this, on the surface, restricts the numbers.  However later in the policy it appears this is not quite so clear cut:

This begs the question just what evidence is considered sufficient to define “gender” when legal sex cannot be easily determined?  Apparently staff can ask the prisoner’s permission to see a Gender Recognition Certificate or evidence that an application has been made.  However, the prisoner is not obliged to supply this information and can withhold it.  The policy also makes it clear that no search can be conducted to determine the sexual characteristics of the prisoner. This prisoner who does not produce  a GRC, or new birth certificate, will not have met the threshold for “full supporting confirmation” of their legal gender”.  The prison can, however, accept “strong supporting confirmation”. This turns out to be as follows:

The first and last categories are documents available to anyone on a “self-declared” basis.  Again how can one evidence “living as a woman”? Would we accept “living as a black man” or would we immediately see how offensive this is?  The middle one “appearance and mannerisms” postulates women as nothing more than mannequins. This  is grossly offensive to actual women but capitulates to wannabe women who think make-up maketh the woman.

Another interesting point made in the policy is the record keeping.  Any prisoner who is deemed to meet this very superficial set of criteria will be recorded as such.

Are crimes committed by men, who identify as women, recorded as male or female? If so how many self-identified women incarcerated are sex offenders? Do we have any way of tracking the risk these males present to the women inside, and outside, the prison?  I have more questions than answers. When we start to have a “puzzlng” increase in “female” sex offenders this will surely distort “evidence” based policy.  Risk assessments on the impact of male violence against women need accurate data. Individual women risk assess when in proximity to males. This is a survival strategy. Policy makers should ensure they have the data to do this on a macro scale.  Since we know there are significant sex based differentials in offence patterns eradicating records based on sex is a risky strategy.

I would also love to know why transgender status has any bearing on sentencing? See the excerpt below ⇓

Is Transgender status being treated as a mitigating factor?  I have seen articles where the judge has allowed an offender to walk free rather than subject them to  custodial sentence. Explicitly stating it was deemed to be  more onerous for a Trans prisoner. Here is one case in which the Judge does not impose a custodial sentence because the Sexual Offender Treatment Programmes are not geared to the Trans-community (which is true but letting the sex offender walk is no solution) : Transgender Sex Offender walks free

Writing such a policy would be challenging in the legal context even if undertaken by skeptical parties. Some of the framing is downright dishonest when contextualised to  female  offences against males and vice versa. Here we have exactly the same phraseology for the location of MTF and FTM.

It must require a suspension of disbelief to write the second paragraph knowing full well a female, regardless of identity, is much more likely to be at risk not presenting a risk to  male prisoners.

A significant feature of the trans community is the need to be validated in the sex you wish you were born in.  Where a MTF demands that validation it can impacts on women’s safety by an obsessive need to be included in female spaces.  The more intimate the more validating.  For a female, with a male identity, this same need places them at risk.  Yet the law dictates this:

I reported on another trans-identifying female earlier in this series who was sectioned in lieu of  being imprisoned. Inevitably they were the target of sexual “advances” when incarcerated, at their request, in the male estate.  FTM Legal Case

I also quote Frances Crook of the Howard League in the above case: 👇

There are 80,000 male prisoners and 3000 female prisoners.  Men imprisoned for sexual offences are at 19% in the male estate.  Of the MTFs, held in the female estate,  41% are in for sexual offences. ↓

Either we have a higher pattern of sexual offences within the Trans umbrella or we have a problem of opportunistic men gaming the system. The outcome for the women is the same whichever the motivation.

The above is from an article in the Spectator. (*The 0.04% figure is open to question as 128 out of the total female population is actually 4%. It is not known if this is because there are males , legally counted as female, in these figures). 

Read more here:

MOJ confirm Fair Play for Women’s work on Transgender Prisoners

All of the above confirms, to me, that the Prison service should revert to the original policy of housing female prisoner’s separately, from males,  and set up special accommodation for trans prisoners where deemed unsafe in the prison of their birth sex.

I have omitted many aspects of this report. The self-reported “intersex” offenders does not stand up to any scrutiny.  Given the low incidence of Disorders of Sexual Development in the wider population it beggars belief that 7 out of 80 say they are “intersex. Once again it is deeply offensive to allow a medical condition to be claimed as an “identity”. Trans-activists have long co-opted this community to serve their own aims and Claire Graham covers this topic here :Intersex & LGBT

I also have not spent a huge amount of time on the how hamstrung the front line staff are. They can’t make a prisoner disclose their sex. They can’t conduct a search with the purpose of identifying the sex of their prisoner. They can’t use blood tests to determine if a prisoner is on a regime of hormones. They can’t tell female prisoners if they have a male incarcerated with them. For MTFs it is rare for non-celebrities to have  what is called “passing privilege”  so I imagine it is perfectly obvious to the women. Yet the prison officers commit a criminal offence if they share that information. The prisoner has the right to demand to be searched by someone of the same “”gender” so  female staff are also being disregarded.

Quite rightly the prison service is concerned that MTF Transgender people are at risk in the male estate.  What jars is that this risk is explicitly acknowledged and care taken to protect a “transwomen” in the male estate.  By contrast women in the female estate are not even allowed to know a male is housed within their estate.

Once again it is abundantly clear that the authorities have simply not consulted or listened to women.  We are here. We are raising our voices. This is NOT ok.