Telegragh - More Than Seventy Per Cent of Transgender Prisoners are in for Sex Offences or Violent Crimes

By Sean Rayment, February 2024

"More than 70 per cent of transgender prisoners in British jails are serving sentences for sex offences and violent crimes, government figures have revealed.

At least 181 of the 244 transgender inmates, more than 74 per cent, are in jail for crimes including rape, forcing under-age children into having sex, grievous bodily harm and robbery.

Up to 144 transgender women, men who identify as females, are housed in male prisons while five are currently imprisoned in female jails - including at least one top-security institution where murderers and terrorists are being detained.

The high levels of violent crimes among male prisoners who identify as women demonstrates why they should not be detained in female prisons, women’s rights campaigners argue.

Campaigners and former prison chiefs, however, were insistent that the high level of violent crimes among trans prisoners did not imply that they were inherently violent, adding that the vast majority lived crime-free lives.

The figures released by the Ministry of Justice also reveal that a further 25 transgender males, women who identify as men, located in female prisons have been convicted of violent crimes and sexual offences. Just a year ago there were fewer than five, according to the Ministry of Justice.

The figures were released after a former female remand prisoner told The Telegraph how one trans woman inside a female high-security prison continuously bullied other prisoners.

The woman said: “There was nobody on my wing - including the prison staff - who thought it was appropriate for a trans woman to be housed inside a female prison. Almost everyone regarded her as a threat.

“She was an absolute nightmare. She was not huge but very athletic and very strong and had all the physical features of a man. She was a bully and was very threatening and intimidating. I think she was fully aware that she was physically much stronger than all the women on the wing and was exploiting that position.

“The belief that she should have been housed in a male prison was unanimous, not just among the prisoners but also the staff.

“She was very disruptive, pushing into the queue every morning when people would line up for their meds or during meal times. This often led to fights and a lot of unnecessary stress in an environment that was always tense. There were a lot of very dangerous inmates in my prison. I shared a wing with murderers and terrorists and women who had committed some very violent crimes. The tension was palpable most of the time so it only needed one spark to set the whole thing off. She was eventually moved from our wing to another because she had become too difficult to manage.”

Rhona Hotchkiss, a former prisoner governor, said that in her experience most trans women prisoners changed their gender only when they came into contact with the criminal justice system.

She also said the figures showed why men who identify as women should only be housed in male prisons.

She said: “Let me be very clear, trans people are not inherently violent and the vast majority live crime-free lives.

“It is always an issue to have males who identify as women in women’s prisons. It’s not necessarily always the physical threat that they experience but the re-traumatisation because many women in prison are already traumatised at the hands of men. They are also faced with constant gaslighting when they are forced to call these men ‘she’. The vast majority of men who identify as transgender in prison did not do so before they came into contact with the justice system.”

Testimony is important

Maya Forstater, executive director of Sex Matters, a human rights organisation that campaigns for clarity on sex in law, said: “The presence of men in women’s prisons immediately makes every female inmate feel unsafe. Even if men do not commit actual violence, they may threaten, bully and sexually harass women. Their very presence is intimidating. This testimony is important and HM Prisons must take heed. It has already implemented policies that keep many trans-identifying men out of women’s prisons, but it needs to finish the job and ensure all prisons are truly single-sex.”

Professor Kathleen Stock, who has been described as a gender-critical feminist, has previously highlighted the issue of transgender men and women being jailed for violent crimes and sexual offences.

In a talk at Oxford University last year, she said that trans women posed a similar risk to biological men. “If you think trans people aren’t violent, you need to talk to some criminologists,” she said.

She added: “If you take the the number of trans women in prison in Britain, and you get the same stat in the US statistics, at least 50 per cent are in there for sexual assault, and that’s a higher rate than the average male. That is not to say that I am saying there is something about being a trans woman that makes you violent.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman said: “Well over 90 per cent of transgender women in custody are held in the men’s estate. We changed the rules last year so transgender women who’ve been convicted of sexual or violent offences – or who retain male genitalia – cannot be held in a women’s prison unless in truly exceptional circumstances.”

Original article here