Could Karen White Be Transferred Back to a Women's Prison? Yes

[arranfan]

Richard Garside has tweeted a thread that has shocked me:

Could Karen White be transferred back to a women's prison? The short answer is yes. Here's how.

Karen White is currently being held in a male prison and is likely to be so for the time being. Many assume that White will be held in a male prison for the entire prison sentence. This is not necessarily the case.

According to media reports, White continues to claim to be a woman and is in the process of transitioning. This could include applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate, which can be awarded to males who retain their male genitalia. Please read the whole thread.

twitter.com/RichardJGarside/status/1050653367641432065

Has anyone mentioned that KW has the right to be considered for women's prison? Or wondered if KW will be handled in the same way that Karen Jones was?

to Sarah and any other person who has suffered at this man's hands.
Has Stonewall made any statement on this case yet (or any of the other sex offenders/rapists who ID as women?
They must know that they cannot and will not win over public opinion until they boot this faction out of their campaign. It just isn't going to happen.

Just been discussed on Jeremy Vine. Bobby from Towie representing the intellect, logic and reasoning skills of the average trans ally. Some people do think ‘Karen’ should be in a women’s prison. Most GC comment Jennie Bond, no one with tackle should be in a women’s prison. Caller told Jeremy Vine off for calling ‘Karen’ ‘she’. Jeremy said it’s policy. Jeremy’s facial expressions largely indicating he thinks this planet is batshit.

sarah. I would be muddled and angry too.

I don't think people have really taken on board what self-id would entail. They think that there will be some embarrassed discomfort which they should either get over and not be a bigot, or quietly avoid.

What it means is that there would be no legal way of keeping women safe in these situations. This has been totally disregarded in the Maria Miller report. There need to be ways of overriding the GRA and rescinding GRCs, even with the current system.

What is being proposed is so ridiculous, and the downsides so obvious, that people are not seeing them, and not addressing them.

Sorry to plop in here. I've seen reference that KW was responsible for 20% of (sex?) assaults in 2017 in the female prison estate.

Can anyone reference stats for assaults in the female prison estate. I know I have seen it somewhere but can't find it now. Want to counter the inevitable "cis women" commit assaults in prison too.

I have also been reading that a committee sits every three months to evaluate trans programme in prison, and there are no representatives on it to make the women's case.

Here is the email to let them know your thoughts on that!

mailto:[email protected]

Exactly Melamim. When this issue is raised you just get accused of judging the whole trans community by a few 'bad apples', as if we should ignore them and pretend all trans people are like their Auntie Jan who transitioned quietly in 1970, or their sweet little 10 year niece/nephew.
No, sorry people, life doesn't work that way.

2015 Dr. James Barrett, President of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists evidence to Maria Miller MP & the Women & Equalities Transgender Equality Inquiry:
"...the ever-increasing tide of referrals of patients in prison serving long or indeterminate sentences for serious sexual offences. These vastly outnumber the number of prisoners incarcerated for more ordinary, non-sexual, offences. It has been rather naïvely suggested that nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case. There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this. These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system"

data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedocument/women-and-equalities-committee/transgender-equality/written/19532.pdf

from the Sunday Times today, article by Andrew Gilligan:

'Trans offender seeks to wipe crimes as a man from record'
(extract)
A transgender offender is seeking to delete from her record two crimes that could only have been committed by a man.

“I do not wish my gender history to be more widely known and do not wish to disclose my trans status to employers,” the woman, who asked to be identified only as Helen, said. She is to launch a judicial review to remove two convictions for “importuning as a man” when she worked at a Soho “clip joint” in the 1970s and 1980s.

A right to removal, if established, could cover rape, another crime that can legally be committed only by a person with a penis.

Trans people with a gender recognition certificate are legally entitled to keep their birth gender secret.

Helen’s barrister, Claire McCann, said disclosure of offences that revealed Helen’s birth gender in criminal record checks was “severe and discriminatory interference with Helen’s right to respect for her private life”. (continues)
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trans-offender-seeks-to-wipe-crimes-as-aman-from-record-qfk5w68lb?shareToken=2bb5072907deafb68dd42f53a6ab758a

Just dropping in Prof. Jeremy Coid's (Emeritus Professor of Forensic Psychiatry) relevant letter, Gender Folly in Women's Jails:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3373901-Gender-folly-in-womens-jails-Sunday-Times-Jeremy-Coid-Emeritus-professor-of-forensic-psychiatry-Queen-Mary-University-of-London

Crime & Justice charity:

"Transgender prisoners – those, mostly men, who assert a gender identity at odds with their birth sex – pose a challenge for prison managers. Prisons, after all, are social institutions grounded in the gender binary: that one is either male or female. Transgender prisoners challenge such a binary.

The current Prison Rules state that male and female prisoners should be kept separate from each other. This is not a British idiosyncrasy.

The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners state that 'Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women, the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate'.

It does not need spelling out why keeping male and female prisoners in separate accommodation should be one of the minimum expectations for the treatment of prisoners."

www.crimeandjustice.org.uk/resources/transgender-prisoners

aranfan posted on previous thread:

"I've just seen this analysis distributed by Scottish Women:

395 sexual assaults in UK prisons in 2017. I found that only 5% (21) occurred in women's prisons. We know from recent headlines that 4 of those was by...Karen White.
ONE trans prisoner is responsible for 20% of ALL the sex assaults that occurred in women's prisons in 2017!!"

The thread has eye-opening tables and numbers: twitter.com/Scottish_Women/status/1038735274392662016

thread:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3357845-To-think-a-rapist-shouldnt-be-in-a-womens-prision-to-start-with?pg=18

I've just been listening to the Tom Swarbrick inteview with Jenny-Anne Bishop, TW and advisor on the national trans advisory board for the prison service, and from what Bishop said last night under the existing rules it would be highly unlikely White would be considered for transfer ever again due to the nature of their criminal history, even if White did transition fully & completely using the "old rules."

I've added a transcript of the interview here:

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3392082-Tom-Swarbrick-LBC-11pm-last-night-Thursday

I think the point that is sort of glossed over a bit in the interview is that, if GRA reform makes everyone at each point in the system of decision-making thing that self-ID overrides everything else, there is the potential for more mistakes of this type.

James Barrett again...

Successful appeal of pre-operative transgender woman without GRC transfer to Women's Estate, this overturned the Home Office's previous refusal. (2009)

No apparent dicussion or assessment of impact on female prisoners except the following evidence from an expert in gender dysphoria, Dr James Barrett of the Gender Identity Clinic, Charing Cross Hospital, who had also known the Claimant for many years, explained why living in role in female accommodation was required:

"it will become clear that she is so widely accepted as female in that unit that location in the main prison will follow. I think that such acceptance will pretty generally apply in the main prison, also, although there will probably always be a small number of prisoners who will choose to make an issue of the matter because they are the sort of women who enjoy conflict. If this patient is able to cope with protracted close proximity women of that sort I would judge her able to cope with the less prolonged, more avoidable, travails of the civilian world."

www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2009/2220.html

Helen and her barrister have grasped the wrong end of the stick. What they should be campaigning for is for the Nordic model re. prostitution, which decriminalises the sale of prostitution, while making the purchase (and pimping and brothel keeping) illegal.

The thing that is wrong is that Helen's past crime of "importuning" is being lumped in with serious sexual crimes which involve the violation of another person's consent. Importuning (as I understand it) covered both "chatting another bloke up, no money involved" and "soliciting". The problem is criminalising the first at all, and keeping the second on someone's record for good, not the dead-naming. (Soliciting IMO should remain illegal as a kind of public nuisance offence, but a fairly low-level one.)

Vine also discussing Stephen Wood on R2 after 12.

Thank whatever for that! Richard Garside will be on with Jeremy Vine:

I'll be discussing Karen White and transgender prisoners on the Jeremy Vine show on Radio Two around 1.00 pm today.

twitter.com/RichardJGarside/status/1050687735395180544

Brilliant good man!

Just wondering why in Ireland they segregate prisoners by sex regardless of how they ID (despite having self ID laws) whereas here, even though we don’t have self ID, it is seen as a breach of the prisoner’s rights to send them to a prison that correlated with their birth sex?...

Because in Ireland they're capable of joined-up thinking?

SarahJ, thank you for your bravery. I am very sorry that you both had to go through this, and that the current debate and near-worship of TG individuals; Sophie Cook FGS talking about feminism will be triggering.

You will get through it, and emerge stronger.

Would you like me to start a thread in AIBU linking to this?

Richard Garside on BBC News 11 October:

www.facebook.com/Jammersminde?tn=%2CdC-R-R&eid=ARB6Um6DR7FODXlU3LsKNqGPW-fYq5qA8D_QDSY5pVN9dlvyNB3kYxEPUNA_mTBFI2pAgRYLuBQPsvnW&hc_ref=ARTImOs0SKDAu8bvZwJ06ix7nQUOcpM62B5exHUQBSBvqV3SuCTilNmz1kfSnN9llQQ&fref=nf

Garside on now.