I don’t think there’s any right answer. If the conditions in women’s prisons are so poor that safeguarding is impossible to be achieved, then yes, perhaps the answer is for the prisoner to live as a woman on a vulnerable prisoners’ wing of a male prison. Or perhaps on a separate wing of a women’s prison. It definitely raises a tricky issue, particularly when the transperson is also a sex offender.
However, what I don’t like about this thread, as with so many other threads on MN about trans issues, is the prejudiced tone. Posters make the leap from a single accused identifying as a woman to saying that somehow trans-people, merely by existing, are doing violence to women. I think that some posters really need to think about what they’re writing. You may not like their choices, but trans-people are also PEOPLE. The fact of their existence is not doing anyone any harm. It is possible to advocate for women’s rights and trans rights, even though sometimes those rights come into conflict. When they come into conflict you have to think about how to resolve that conflict, not pick one group to vilify. I actually agree that most often that conflict will be resolved by the trans people having to compromise, just by dint of there being fewer of them. But that doesn’t mean that I think they have no rights or that their rights are less important. It’s just a fact of life and law that sometimes people’s rights come into conflict and you have to make a judgment call about that, while still attempting to respect those rights as far as possible.
I find the bigoted hate speech on these threads so depressing. I wish some of you could actually meet some trans people and start seeing them as people. Would you wish corrective violence issued by fellow prisoners on a cis-gender prisoner, male or female? Would you make casual jokes about forcing surgery on cis-gender people? Would you say that gay people are just faking it because you personally haven't experienced that feeling? Start again. Start from the point that these are fellow human beings, with lives and feelings just like yours. Activate some basic empathy. Then think about the problem again. No one is denying that trans issues raise social problems, simply by virtue of us having a society that is so heavily gendered. But it's possible to think about and solve those problems without this "burn the witch" attitude.