Feminism: Sex & gender discussions
UK transgender murder rate
pisacake · 07/11/2017 13:58
According to this source transrespect.org/en/map/trans-murder-monitoring/, 8 transgender people have been murdered in the UK since 2008
Their list (taken from various PDFs on their site):
2015
Vikki Thompson - not murder but accidental death, initially reported as suicide www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/may/19/jury-returns-verdict-on-transgender-woman-found-dead-in-male-prison
Vanessa Santillan - killed by husband because of sex work www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34591733
2013
Jacqueline Cowdrey - found NOT to have been murdered www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-sussex-26145984
2012
Chrissie Azzopardi - killed over drug debts www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/oct/18/chrissie-azzopardi-murder-life-sentence
2011
Lionel/Suzie Morl - described as transvestite, murdered by two Big Issue sellers (male & female) to live off his disability benefits www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/guilty-couple-who-killed-transvestite-689598
2010
Sonia/David Burgess gender fluid lawyer killed by a gender fluid/trans client www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-16305570
2009
Andrea Waddell
www.getreading.co.uk/news/local-news/andrea-waddell-strangled-client-4226743 - sex worker killed by customer. Customer claimed not to know Waddell was transsexual. "During the trial, jurors were asked to consider whether McMillan killed her after discovering she was transgender, or because she was unable to perform sexually for him because of physical ailments after illnesses including fibromyalgia."
Destiny Lauren sex worker - killed by customer www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/life-sentence-for-killer-of-transsexual-prostitute-destiny-lauren-1-680308 Customer had previously sought the services of transsexual prostitutes going by the names of "Fransexual" and "VickisDomain"
So in summary, not 8 murders but 6, of which:
3 were sex workers killed because of their sex work
2 were killed for financial reasons
1 was killed by another transgender person
"A total of 152 UK sex workers have been murdered since 1990. According to the charity National Ugly Mugs, 85% of street prostitutes have experienced violence and only 25% of victims are willing to report crimes to the police."
news.sky.com/story/sex-workers-still-vulnerable-10-years-after-ipswich-murders-10679614
There were around 571 homicides in the last year in England & Wales, that's approximately 1 per 100,000 people.
Thus over the 9 years 2008 to 2016, given six homicides, that implies a transgender murder rate of 0.67 per year, assuming transgender people are as likely to be killed as the rest of the country. That would suggest that there are only 67,000 transgender people in England & Wales.
However, the LOWEST estimate for transgender people is 0.1% (so around 57,000), and GIRES says it is 0.2% at the very minimum (so around 114,000).
Obviously given the tiny numbers you can't be too specific with these statistics, we aren't taking about a population (of murdered trans people) so much as vanishingly rare cases.
With regard to sex work, there are apparently around 72,800 sex workers in the UK of which 4% (approx 2900 are transgender). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_the_United_Kingdom#Extent
Given the overall sex worker murder rate of ~6 per year, that implies 1 in every 12,000 sex workers will be murdered in any given year. Therefore given the 2900*9 = 26,100 transgender sex worker years in the period under study, we'd expect 26100/12000 = 2.175 murders of transgender sex workers. The total of 3 is very slightly above average in that respect, however statistically it's not even remotely significant (5 would be significant at the 95% confidence interval). I am not 100% clear if the case of Vanessa Santillan is included within the figures, as Santillan was murdered not by a client, but a jealous husband.
Also note that in general 1 in 780 people are sex workers (and sex workers have a homicide rate 8 times higher than the general population) but as many as 1 in 20 transgender people may be sex workers, so there will be a higher rate of murder.
Moreover, all of the murders were biologically male (and indeed most transgender people are male). The male murder rate is around 75% higher than the female murder rate in the country as a whole.
pisacake · 07/11/2017 15:57
As you pointed out, it's very difficult to draw any conclusions about the trans murder rate given the low numbers who are killed and the low numbers of trans people.
I never said that, please don't put words in my mouth.
We can conclude that the data do not support that hypothesis that trans murder rates are higher.
Clearly if people claim that trans people are at risk of murder, then there should be evidence to support that claim. There is not, therefore we should disregard it.
sagamartha · 07/11/2017 15:59
I never said that, please don't put words in my mouth
As you said:
Obviously given the tiny numbers you can't be too specific with these statistics, we aren't taking about a population (of murdered trans people) so much as vanishingly rare cases
It's tiny numbers as you pointed out. It's very hard to draw any conclusions given the very low rate of murder in this country.
No one on any side can use these statistics to draw any conclusions.
sagamartha · 07/11/2017 16:02
We can conclude that the data do not support that hypothesis that trans murder rates are higher
I agree.
No one can draw any conclusions about the trans murder rate. Luckily the murder rate is very low for anyone.
The risk of violence and assault however is something that is probably more likely to happen - and I would guess that varies a lot between trans women and what they are doing - such as sex work.
Elendon · 07/11/2017 16:05
I would guess I'd rather you did more than guess on the subject. Saga
sagamartha · 07/11/2017 16:07
I'd rather you did more than guess on the subject
I would imagine that the risk of assault is much higher for a trans sex worker than it is for certain other types of trans women given the nature of what they do.
pisacake · 07/11/2017 16:17
"Actually it's statistically dubious as there are such low numbers involved.
It's rare for anyone to be murdered in the UK
Trans people are a small group.It's going to be unlikely that a trans person is murdered given that it's rare for anyone to be murdered and trans people are in a small group."
Sorry this is total bollocks and distortion of basic statistics.
For any group we can calculate a range outwith we can say that a result is suspicious at a given confidence interval (e.g, 95%).
For example, if you bought 10 lottery tickets then the number of tickets you would expect to match all six numbers is is between 0 and 0 at a 95% confidence interval.
For a trans population of, say, 540,000 (based on 9 years * 60,000 people), and a murder rate of 1 in 100,000, then the 95% confidence interval is between 1 and 10 murders.
If there had been, say, 20 murders then that would be an extraordinary result. However, it wasn't, there were 6.
20 murders in 9 years isn't all that many, so to say that we 'can't possibly draw any conclusions' is ridiculous.
My point about the numbers being small are simply that even if there had been more murders, it is difficult to draw conclusions from it. Let's say there was a transphobic serial killer who killed 20 people before himself being killed. That would result in a big distortion to the numbers without implying an underlying change in society.
In other words, we CAN conclude from small numbers that there is NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER of trans people being at greater risk of murder than the population at large. But IF there had been greater numbers of murders it wouldn't necessarily prove a general risk - you'd have to look at all the factors, i.e. check estimates of numbers of trans people, check the prevalence of other known risk factors (sex work) etc.
If the data do not support a risk, we do not say 'well there weren't very many murders anyway, but it's definitely true, believe me guvnor'.
Claims require evidence. The claim that transgender people are at heightened risk of murder in the UK has NO EVIDENCE to support it.
pisacake · 07/11/2017 16:19
tl;dr 'there is no evidence of trans people being at greater risk of murder'
Statistical fact.
If you want to argue that they are, then its incumbent on the claimant to prove their claim.
WhatWouldGenghisDo · 07/11/2017 16:21
If we accept GIRES' estimate that 0.2% of the population are trans
Then if trans people were being murdered at the same rate as the general population (about 5000 victims over 9 years) we would expect 10 trans murder victims over the same period.
pisacake has identified 6
So we can say with absolute confidence that over the past 9 years, trans people have not faced an increased risk of being murdered relative to the general population.
pisacake · 07/11/2017 16:28
If we wanted to make an unsupported claim, let's say 'trans people are twice as likely to be murdered as the rest of the population', then the accuracy of the claim would on the number of trans people in the population.
In other words, if there are 0.2% trans people in the general population then that claim, given six murders in 9 years, is provably false.
However if it is only 0.1%, then the claim is not provable to be false.
However in any case it is on the asserter to prove their assertion, so it is sufficient for us to say there is no evidence of a difference.
sagamartha · 07/11/2017 16:47
I agree that it's up to the assertor to prove their claims and there is no evidence to support the claim. I do think that there is little agreement on how many trans people there are and how they are defined.
I do think that such low numbers make it hard to draw any conclusions. The general murder rate also varies depending on stranger murder or murder by someone known to the victim.
SecretHandshake · 07/11/2017 16:54
I would imagine that the risk of assault is much higher for a trans sex worker than it is for certain other types of trans women given the nature of what they do.
I agree. Anyone working in the sex industry is at much higher risk at being assaulted. I'm reading a book on prostitution. Fucking hell, it's unbelievable.
Bucketsandspoons · 07/11/2017 17:11
Is there any information anywhere on the relative numbers of other groups? ie men, women (I know that averages about two a week?), children, over 60s, race groups? Does that give any helpful comparisons about proportional impact?
Elendon · 07/11/2017 17:20
Anyone working in the sex industry is at much higher risk at being assaulted.
Even pimps, drug dealers, madams and landlords?
What's the name of the book you are reading? I'd like to know.
SecretHandshake · 07/11/2017 17:35
C'mon Elendon, you know what I meant. I was talking about prostitutes. I think sagamartha too.
Okay, I should have been more specific, you're right about that 
WhatWouldGenghisDo · 07/11/2017 17:37
If only 0.1% of the population is trans, then as pisacake says you have an actual rate of 6 murder victims versus an expected rate of 5, so this might mean trans people were more at risk.
The scientific convention when claiming there's a difference between groups is to only make the claim when there's less than a 5 percent chance that the claim is incorrect.
I'm on the go so no access to a computer but according to a calculation I just did literally on the back of an envelope, in this case there's around an 80% chance the claim is incorrect (X2(1) = 0.092)
So trans people probably aren't more at risk even according to the most conservative estimate. There's certainly no grounds for making the claim that they are, based on these data.
SecretHandshake · 07/11/2017 17:41
But yeah, I guess probably even pimps, drug dealers, madams and landlords. But not on the level of prostitutes obvs.
Lancelottie · 07/11/2017 17:47
The statistics could be wrong in the other direction if people who are known to be murder victims were not known to be trans, and thus not reported as such. (I'm not sure where I'm going with that point, just musing.)
ArcheryAnnie · 07/11/2017 17:56
To add to pisacake's list of transwomen who have murdered others, I think "Joanne" Latham qualifies, though he did not succeed in killing anyone. He was in prison for life, for three attempted murders, and was considered so dangerous his own lawyer couldn't be left alone with him.
If we add in rapists, we will be here all day.
pisacake · 07/11/2017 18:04
Yes he doesn't count as a murder though otherwise we'd have to add the attempted murders of transgender people too. However he is frequently trotted out as why we need to allow trans people in women's prisons (I wish this was a joke).
www.theguardian.com/society/2015/dec/01/second-trans-prisoner-joanne-latham-apparently-takes-own-life-in-male-jail
Absolutely depraved person, but the only concern for the trans lobby is to get him into women's prison.
It shows the danger of statistics - statistics might show a large number of transgender suicides, but no amount of suicides should ever result in depraved psychos like Latham being housed in the female estate.
Ereshkigal · 07/11/2017 18:10
Sagamartha
Your "the numbers are too tiny" applies to the US trans murder rates as well. In 2014 only about 12 trans murders. So perhaps point that out to all your trans friends when they try to emotionally blackmail and bully people with them?
DJBaggySmalls · 07/11/2017 18:41
sagamartha
It's rare for anyone to be murdered in the UK
On average, 9 people are murdered every week in the UK. Its not rare at all.
www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/crimeandjustice/compendium/focusonviolentcrimeandsexualoffences/yearendingmarch2015/chapter2homicide
Datun · 07/11/2017 18:55
The risk of violence and assault however is something that is probably more likely to happen
Hear that ? That is the unmistakable sound of a goalpost being moved.
To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.