In case it’s helpful for anyone here, I’ve done a breakdown (based on 2016 stats, from ONS population data and government prison statistics) on expected levels of transwomen prisoners compared to what we know so far:
Population of England and Wales: 58,381,300, so approx 29190650 males and females each.
Adult population (over 18s): approx 78.6% of that so 22,943,851 each of males and females.
78,968 males in prison (note that if you have a GRC you will be included in the stats of your acquired gender but it is probably not significant for this part given numbers involved) so % of adult males in prison: 0.344% To 3sf.
Females in prison 3795 so % of adult females in prison: 0.0165% To 3sf.
If there is a 0.2% prevalence of transgender people in the UK that’s about 116,763 people. Given the higher proportion of biological males who are trans-identified, we’ll assume 80% of these individuals are transwomen, which is a population of 93,410.
If transwomen have a female pattern of offending, we would expect there to be:
93410 x 0.000165 = 15.4 transwomen prisoners (let’s just round up to 16 in case we’ve underestimated the population a bit)
If transwomen have a male pattern of offending, we would expect:
93410 x 0.00344 = 321 transwomen prisoners.
So obviously, even with a 0.2% prevalence of trans people in general, the recorded number of transwomen prisoners is seven times higher than we’d expect from people with female-pattern criminal behaviour.
The expected number given Male-pattern offending is higher than the number we have from FPFW, but it was a minimum based on 73% of stats so...can’t draw any firm conclusions without more data.
However, the last time anyone studied this topic in the UK they came up with a 0.1% prevalence of transgender individuals, in which case:
Female pattern of offending means we’d expect 8 transwomen prisoners.
Male pattern offending means we’d expect about 161 transwomen prisoners.
Again, the absolute minimum number of transwomen prisoners is 113, (and I’m not sure if that’s 2016 or 2017 but we’ll take it for now) because the Fair Play For Women report assumed that any references to a transgender prisoner meant they were the only one, and references to transgender prisoners referred to 2 or possibly 3 prisoners, and we’ve seen that at least one prison has 11 trans-identified prisoners.
And there was only data for 73% of prisons so assuming similar prevalence the minimum number across the whole of England and Wales is:
113/73 x 100 = 155 transwomen prisoners
But hey ho, not enough data on actual prevalence of transgender prisoners (transwomen in this specific example) to draw a firm conclusion.
We can, however, conclude that transwomen definitely do not display female-typical patterns of criminality.
But it would be really helpful if someone in government could actually count the real number.
Because until we know how much of an underestimate Fair Play for Women’s tally is, we can’t draw any conclusions as to whether transwomen criminality is at lower rates than male-typical criminality, or whether, as other studies in Sweden and California have concluded, it is at parity or above compared to other biological males.