This is long. Apologies in advance. Can I also caveat that I work in the construction industry and until recently have had no cause to think about these issues. This is my attempt at making sense of it all. I am totally open to critique and correction from anybody kind enough to take the time to read the following.
@DoctorW
The Scottish system does not have a self-identification system for locating prisoners in female prisons.
Everything I am reading, parliamentary research briefing and the actual Scottish Policy itself, indicates that it does have a self-identification system.
No GRC is required, in fact the policy clearly states that Applying for a gender recognition certificate is optional and is not required in order to have protection from gender reassignment discrimination . The policy highlights that the GRC is simply the mechanism that lets a trans person change their birth certificate to reflect the gender they now live in. Self-declaration is all that is required for prison Reception Managers and Unit Managers to initiate accommodating trans persons in custody within the estate they identify with.
(Doctor W states) It might not be called a 'transgender case board' but someone in the Scottish prison service will be doing an assessment and saying yes or no to the move to a women's prison.
The “someone” who “does the assessment” or at least who co-ordinates the process is the Prison Unit Manager. When a new trans prisoner arrives (or an existing one self-ids as opposite gender), The Unit Manager makes the decision, based on self-declaration as to where to accommodate that prisoner, they then have 7 days to convene an initial gender reassignment case conference
(Doctor W states) : This is the gate-keeping process that weeds out the fakes and the dangerous ones.
My reading of the guidance suggests that the gender reassignment case conference is largely concerned with placing the trans person in the estate they wish for and, once in custody, receives treatment that accords with their extant rights under the 2004 GRA ie they should not discriminated against no matter where in the reassignment process they are, GRC or no GRC.
This bit of the Scottish policy (advice to the gender reassignment case conference) is telling:
A male-to-female person in custody living permanently as a woman without genital surgery should be allocated to a female establishment. She should not be automatically regarded as posing a high sexual offence risk to other people in custody and should not be subject to any automatic restrictions of her association with other people in custody.
However, if there is clear evidence that she, as an individual, may pose a sexual offence risk, then this should be dealt with as for any other person in custody posing a risk. Only where a risk assessment determines it is justified, should she be subject to increased staff supervision or restrictions of her association with other people in custody.
This statement and everything I have been reading over the last few days leads me to the following conclusions:
(1) The present prison system in Scotland supports self-identification and their policy actively supports placing self-declared MTF prisoners in the female estate.
(2) The case board system in Scotland is primarily there to protect the rights of the self-declared trans person in line with the rights they are accorded under the 2004 GRA
(3) When it comes to “weeding out” high risk prisoners, the issue of gender identification and custody risk are treated separately. The former does not override the latter. Thus even if the case boards were done away with, high risk MTF prisoners would “ be dealt with as for any other person in custody posing a risk”. To do otherwise could be considered to infringe the human rights of other prisoners.
(4) Given all of the above – any future change to the GRA that formalises self-declaration will, as far as I can see, broadly result in BUSINESS AS USUAL in the Scottish prison system.