The Times reports on a new jail in a jail for trans women

[truthisarevolutionaryact]

Andrew Gilligan reporting:

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/europes-first-jail-in-a-jail-for-trans-women-vg7r57qfh?shareToken=50bf9da1df3d91e8bce68b1c608561e5

Maybe those most vulnerable of women - prisoners - are about to be finally protected from male born sex offenders.

This is real progress. But it still shocks me to the core that prisoners like “Karen” white were housed in the general female estate.

I agree with a PP, that once male prisoners realise it will not give them access to naked women in showers, there’ll be far fewer of them claiming to be trans in the first place.

Thery will have to have separate Movement Orders at times different to the women's MOs - to get to education, workshops, dinner, exercise etc in order to keep them separate.

Will it be female staff?

There is capacity for 19 in this new wing & there are currently 20 with GRCs (I think that’s what I read earlier) so this will accommodate nearly all of them.
The self-IDers will have to stay in men’s prisons.

This is how I read it.

Vulnerable self id male transpeople should be treated the same as any vulnerable male prisoner.

That's what I wonder, Eva. Given that the Prison Service has finally realised that putting TW sex offenders in women's prisons isn't a good idea, hopefully they've wised up to the tactics some TWs have used to get searched by women officers and will prevent that happening again, as they have a duty to their staff.

Anne Ruzylo XX ♀️⚕️🇮🇪🇮🇹🇵🇱
It's a start but this unit doesn't have its own kitchen, gym, visits.
Shame they couldn't use a unit inside a men's prison!
#WomenStandUp #WarOnWomen

I can't see why the trans wing wouldn't be staffed, in the main, by trans correctional officers. Surely "trans women" would have better awareness of the trans specific needs of the inmates and the issues they face in the correctional system. I mean, I think it seems like a positive concept for the staff and inmates both..

'One, Tara Hudson, who had lived as a woman for years but not legally changed her gender, was placed in a men’s jail, where she said she was treated “like an animal in a zoo”.'

Actually a month prior to conviction, Hudson told the Daily Mirror “I’m actually a bloke”.
transcrimeuk.com/2017/10/30/tara-hudson/

This does not allay my fears at all.

It's the same as saying that there will be a part of a building in a Rape Crisis Centre reserved for male victims. Or a corridor with rooms for men in a women's hostel.

Men belong in men's prisons.

There is a forseeable risk with the proposal : at times of staff shortages and small populations of transwomen, prison managers will transfer transgender prisoners 'next door', on a supposed 'temporary' basis. It's what happens in real life with under-resourced public services.

There needs to be some sort of monitoring by women advocates to ensure that the two sexes remain separate.

So will they will be considered female and any events, needs etc recorded as being female prisoners?

A men's block in a women's prison?

Where do they get food/exercise/medical treatment?

This is a joke right?

So far so good, but this is a short term sticking plaster which will protect some women in some prisons- it is not even a solution for all women prisoners or all staff in those prisons. This new block on the women’s estate is a welcome and important development only insofar as it acknowledges the urgent need for a third accommodation space. We all know the arguments for that third space now thanks to Karen White case.

This policy chance goes to show how very important openness, reality, sunlight and crucially mainstream front-page news media attention like the White case gathered, can go towards protecting women’s rights. So all told this new block on the women’s estate is an important win for women because we are starting from such a low base of zero protection it feels like.

But- However necessary for women’s safety implementing these welcome changes is, we’ll still need to mitigate each specific instance where the GRA endangers women or kids- and these problems will keep coming while we still have the GRA.

So another reason to welcome this move is that it is likely to prompt court cases from GRC holders and non GRC holders who want to be housed in (or remain housed in) women’s prisons- so some more clarity and sunlight will hopefully emerge from that case law. But this is a slow route to protecting women in prisons right now and is expensive to the public purse to defend it.

And for so long as the GRA exists we are going to see variations on these legal cases in other settings^ because the limits of what the GRC offers are not well-defined and are not understood legally.

So rather than wait around for that prescribing of limits to GRC rights to happen in all these other settings and every relevant area of women’s lives- work, education, healthcare, sports, prizes and opportunities etc etc- which will take lifetimes, given the establishment’s preference for.a quiet life, and will have a human cost to women in those settings all the while, I think the action should be focused to the source.

I think the GRA should be dismantled as a piece of legislation that has served its important purpose back in the dark days before same sex marriage and equal pension rights were permitted, but is now redundant and offering certification to allow all kinds of boundary pushing that threatens women’s rights.

There are no rights now that trans people don’t have that anyone else has. If so please correct me.

The other problem is the lack of clarity on interplay between GRA and EQA.

IANAL so happy to be corrected here.

Those two problems cause a lack of protection of women that the TRAs are weaponising against us and are I think are a big part of the source problem that is keeping individual women in a constantly defensive position of our everyday rights.

I just don’t think women should have to spend our time fighting against all these legally-supported encroachments on ourselves and our children’s freedom to be out in public, our safety, dignity, privacy. These are everyday instances and they are so legion that we can’t fight all of them and they happen at such local level that they don’t get scrutiny and we can’t realistically expect to rely on scrutiny to solve the issues. Like when local women put off from being able to swimming because we can’t change in privacy at our local swimming pool - just one local example of all the various multiple threatened areas of our lives. We can’t fight every one. We can’t fight all the examples of the chilling effect that this past 15 years of lack of legal clarity brings into policy or where the existing law has been misunderstood or where woke idiots have been lobbied and then want to ‘get ahead of the law’.

So let’s go back and demand the sources of cover for men who want to encroach are removed. then we can scale down the defensive work that we have been forced to take on. Because at some point we’ll be exhausted by fighting it all and the next generation are already being encouraged to have weakened boundaries. so it feels like we need to sort this out soon for everyone’s sakes.

And in the meantime I would like to know what EHRC think of all this and why they aren’t immediately loudly calling for legal clarity to be pursued.

Excellent post Chatty. The cost - both financially and emotionally of having to fight all this is draining. We actually need politicians to sort it out. Brutally ( and I hate acknowledging that any woman or child has to suffer before these fools realise what they've done) but the MoJ have only done this because of the clear evidence of harm from Karen White.

I do think we're at a tipping point where this is slowly starting to occur to people. I hope that the Tavistock debate will encourage more parents to take the evidence of the pressure and dangers to children directly to headteachers and demand that the school remove lobby groups access to children and remove grooming materials from the curriculum.

TW need a separate third space prison self contained, with all the facilities that a stand-alone prison should have. Not a block or wing of a prison and never on the women’s estate.

A third space is needed so that nobody else’s rights are diminished in order to recognise the needs and rights of trans people.

Providing a new block or wing in a women’s prison for trans prisoners like this, won’t disincentivise male prisoners who want access to women because they will still get access to women in a new block that is not self contained on the femal estate.

So while it’s right that all self-IDing as women could be housed in such blocks- and many more blocks and wings like this would be needed- this is impractical and inadequate as an absolute solution, because there are not clear legal rules around self ID. If anyone can say they are trans and get taken seriously then what’s to stop everyone doing it if they don’t like male accommodation and/or they want to be around women?

Furthermore while the GRA exists and there is so much fudge around how it works with the Equalities Act - why on earth would any prisoner who already HAS a GRC and is already housed in the women’s estate, ever agree to be moved into a third space?

Why would they do that move without a massive court case which could take years and will cost the public purse millions?

If they can argue that they ARE legally women, how could they legally be asked to leave a women’s prison? We are back to the practical problems caused by retaining the GRA and GRCs again.

Why is it next to the woman’s jail though?

Why is it next to the woman’s jail though?

Exactly. Half are sex offenders and we know how they can put huge energy into being fucking disgusting and invasive - wiping their semen where women might touch it, going to extraordinary lengths to perpetrate voyeurism, getting their hands on sanpro - they need to be kept away from women on a completely separate facility.

Thanks Truth I do agree with you that it’s a tipping point now, and useful test cases will emerge from this, and that’s really heartening.

I just keep thinking to myself why are women individually having to risk our livelihoods and spend our time to sort out shit that this poorly constructed law places on us. I want institutions to think of women and girls and to actually protect us as a given.

I don’t think we can keep the pressure up as individuals on the law and institutions forever or quickly enough.

I want the law to help women too and often that will need to look like a legally-protected third space and legally-protected single sex (not a shared or mixed space). This just doesn’t seem like much to ask for women and girls but apparently it’s like asking to be given the moon on a stick..

I suppose they can see into the woman’s jail/grounds. Not pandering to them at all eh?

This unit used to house young female offenders-presumably to give the young ladies protection from the rest of the prison-does this mean that in future young female offenders are housed with the general female population?
Why on earth is a facility built for young women being used to house men who feel like women, who have a higher than average rate of sex offences-it’s just not good enough.
Whilst it’s great that transwomen are in theory now removed from the female estate, it’s not a long term solution & there is still a risk for female prisoners.

Why on earth is a facility built for young women being used to house men who feel like women, who have a higher than average rate of sex offences-it’s just not good enough.

It's women budging up for males again.

Vulnerable women are losing out because male people take priority.

I think the GRA should be dismantled as a piece of legislation that has served its important purpose back in the dark days before same sex marriage and equal pension rights were permitted, but is now redundant and offering certification to allow all kinds of boundary pushing that threatens women’s rights.

I concur.

This unit used to house young female offenders-presumably to give the young ladies protection from the rest of the prison-does this mean that in future young female offenders are housed with the general female population?

Hopefully it means that there are fewer girls being given custodial sentences so fewer places are needed ... I don't know if that's the case or not.

However, I'd guess it almost certainly means that some girls will now be placed in YOI further from their families and friends.

However, I'd guess it almost certainly means that some girls will now be placed in YOI further from their families and friends.

Good point.

Following on from that - we should note that successful reintegration post-sentence for offenders is greatly affected if they are unable to maintain good contact with friends and family while inside. This also holds for trans prisoners. We can't just designate one prison a trans prison and that's the end of it. Trans wings in multiple male prisons (so prisoners can be accommodated both nearish to family and according to risk) seems to be the best solution to me.

Worth remembering that the unit was already out of use - they haven't moved young women out of it to make space for the new facility.

I hope that this was a pragmatic way to implement a policy change quickly, rather than having to wait for building work to be completed elsewhere, but that in tandem there is a project to provide the facilities needed for all trans prisoners who are best housed in the specialist facility