Sunday Times Front Cover. Trans Prison wings

[RedToothBrush]

Well.

The comments under the Times article are being rather enthusiastically pruned. More than half that were on their an hour ago have now gone. I don't recall them being particularly out there, more like "well, what did they expect?"

Now being reported in the DM
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6687873/UK-jails-transgender-wings-two-female-inmates-sexually-assaulted-trans-inmate.html

The usual suspects (and the powerful ones hidden behind the scenes) will be lobbying like mad to make sure this doesn't proceed. We have to do everything we can to make sure that it does, and without delay.

I don't think any variance from strict sex segregation should be happening, but that doesn't mean that I don't see it's not simple for the prison authorities to work out what to do with trans inmates.

It's not simple, but they are just another group of potentially vulnerable prisoners. I assume that the prison service has guidelines for ensuring the safety of various other groups of vulnerable prisoners, within the prisons designed for each sex. They just need to be extended to cover prisoners who 'identify as' a different sex or non-binary.

The problem has arisen because of the legal fiction that was created with the GRA (and possibly before) that someone who wanted to 'live as' the opposite sex could actually be legally recognised as such. Biological reality has to be the overriding factor here, not the fictions that were put in place to help the experience of people whose lives were being made difficult because of their non-compliance with gendered expectations.

This looks like fantastic news

They just need to be extended to cover prisoners who 'identify as' a different sex or non-binary.

I don't disagree in the slightest! I'm just saying that with a very small prisoner population, it may make more sense to accommodate low risk trans prisoners with other vulnerable prisoners who are not trans rather than assuming trans wings will sort everything.

Someone posted this:

www.thejc.com/news/uk-news/scottish-prison-sees-number-of-jewish-inmates-soar-as-they-claim-kosher-meals-1.63580

in the comments under the Times article. It looks so apt I'm struggling to believe it isn't a hoax.

it may make more sense to accommodate low risk trans prisoners with other vulnerable prisoners who are not trans rather than assuming trans wings will sort everything.

Yes, this would be a solution. Identify the needs of the trans prisoners and the way in which they may be vulnerable within the general prison population, and try to make sure they are safe. It's absurd to pander to the notion that they have actually changed sex.

This idea that people who say they 'identify as' the opposite sex, have somehow changed something fundamental about themselves needs to be questioned. Prisoners just declaring that they have some identity or characteristic which requires special treatment is ridiculous. Even more so when it's clear that having that particular characteristic brings obvious benefits - whether it's better food or access to women.

The fools had a group therapy scheme, which the offenders spent giving each other ideas.
That's awful

Will female staff be expected to pat down trans women?
I should imagine so, police and security officers are expected to

This is progress but it needs to be ALL transgender prisoners. Not some, not most, absolutely all. So either imprisoned on sex appropriate estate or as trans in separate estate. Otherwise it is still a system wide open to the abuse we have already seen and will see more of. We need to trust the chromosomes (not some random panel of people) to judge and enforce the equality act.

We mustn't be fooled by a political "give the noisy dog a frikkin bone to shut up" approach, we need the full enforcement of single sex spaces back in place. Nothing less is good enough.

Yes Wunder I don't completely trust that this won't be a case of only moving them to a trans wing if and when they do something proven to be bad.

I'd like more emphasis on the rights of female prisoners to their privacy and dignity away from any male prisoners.

Does anyone know why the comments under that Times article have dissappeared?

There was something odd with the comments earlier, many disappeared from the first lot that were posted this morning. And then after an initial flurry not many were appearing. Odd.

When I clicked on it it said that they weren't accepting comments on it. I didn't realised they'd been enabled then disabled.

Meanwhile the Mail readers seem to think that going to a 'trans wing' would be some sort of privilege for the prisoners - they don't seem to have realised that some of them have been going straight to women's prisons and this would just keep them where they belong.

I don’t understand why The Times are brave enough to publish a perfectly factually true story, and have comments open, then pull the whole lot (rather than just allowing the mods not to print anything abusive.) Who is pressuring them into not printing comments?

Does anybody know where the source of Gilligan's material for this article comes from? And is it available online?

On Twitter, he mentions "minutes of the Ministry of Justice transgender advisory board" and has shared screenshots of redacted material from those minutes. For example, "X stated that she expects the transgender or non-binary prison population to increase to around 1000)".

Maybe it was a FOI request that Gilligan raised?

Or maybe those minutes were leaked to Gilligan?

Trans prisoners expected to rise to 1000?
They literally would not fit into female prisons if the numbers rose that steeply.
Remaining in men's prisons is great news but would Labour/Lib Dems fight to overturn this if in power I wonder?

The Times said that if it was not happy with the comments (nasty remarks at author) they would pull comments. I didn’t get to see any do I don’t know for sure.

I saw maybe 50 comments. The ones I saw commenting on Gilligan were saying they were pleased he was pursuing the story. Of the rest many were on-topic and reasonable.

I have a niggling worry about this, can anyone comment on human rights for prison visiting/family contact?

I've been looking at a map of the distribution of prisons in England & Wales www.justice.gov.uk/contacts/prison-finder and the main concentration is through the SE and Midlands up to the M62 corridor, with a small cluster in the NE. Huge chunks of the SW, Wales, and the more rural parts of the NW have very little prison estate of any kind. This already means that the families of prisoners from those areas have to travel a long way.

The trans prison population is small vs the whole prison total. It doesn't make sense to have a trans wing in every prison - you would be looking at confining these prisoners to a small number of sites on the grounds of cost, efficiency, and access to specialist medical/psychiatric care. Logically, that then means some families will end up with an inordinate distance to travel - eg Cornwall to Birmingham. Does this create a loophole for a legal challenge to keep someone in the female estate on human rights grounds? What about those in the juvenile estate (given the rocketing number of kids identifying as trans, this population should go up proportionately)? What about those in forensic psychiatry units?

Maybe I'm being pernickety but we've seen how easily the system is gamed...

Then they should be housed in the male estate & given adequate protection within those prison buildings. Housing them with women is not the answer.

I have a niggling worry about this, can anyone comment on human rights for prison visiting/family contact?

You go where you get sent. Prisoners are quite often moved between prisons, especially if they cause trouble.

However, as I said above: it is genuinely bad for prisoners both during and after sentence if family contact is poor or breaks down.

And there will be low risk, non violent trans prisoners who are perfectly capable of successfully rebuilding their lives post-sentence, just as there are in all prisoner groups. And that's something we all want. Less recidivism.

(Again: not suggesting accommodation in the female estate - just that trans wings may well not be the simple answer many are assuming it is.)

4,000 women prisoners and an expected 1,000 trans women prisoners. There's simply not enough room in the female estate for this nonsense, so of course something has to change - trans wings are definitely the answer, and they can't complain.

If there's 4000 women prisoners and 1000 trans women - that will heavily affect statistics about women prisoners wont it!? Statistics relating to violent crime, or being victims of domestic abuse....

I dont like the idea that 1 in 5 female prisoners could be men.