Trans women 'put female inmates at risk'

 

Trans women ‘put female inmates at risk’ The Times 14.05.19

Transgender women prisoners have said that prison service policy is putting female inmates at risk.

Two trans convicts expressed alarm that prisoners who were transitioning to be women but had not had surgery were being sent to women’s prisons.

In October Karen White, 52, was jailed for life for sexually assaulting two prisoners while on remand in a women’s jail and raping two women.

Lisa Simpson, a trans prisoner at HMP Littlehey in Cambridgeshire, told Inside Time, a newspaper for prisoners, that transitioning prisoners should not be allowed to mix with women inmates while they still had penises. She welcomed a unit at Downview women’s prison in Surrey for what she referred to as “those assorted freaks that think it is acceptable to invade women’s safe places with an intact penis”.

She wrote: “It isn’t until you have the thing removed that you are a woman and [you] shouldn’t be mixing with vulnerable women.”

Sasha Chi Chi Hart, a prisoner at Leyhill open prison in Gloucestershire, asked whether it was right to put a sex offender who had not had surgery in the women’s system even if they were having hormone treatment. She said she had seen 17 sex offenders “jump on the trans bandwagon” and added: “The sickest part is that the system can do sod all about [them] because the policy states they must be treated as transgender prisoners if they say they are.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “The wider management of transgender offenders is a highly sensitive issue which poses unique and complex challenges and we are determined to get it right. That’s why we are reviewing the way we manage all transgender offenders — this work is ongoing.”