Searching for expert statement re male prisoners seeking transition

[MsTiggywinkletoyou]

This was a prepared statement by a gender specialist made to Parliament, explaining the reasons why some long-term male prisoners choose to identify as women. He was a top-level expert (head of something - a medical specialist organisation, or a group of NHS staff?) and his statement consolidated his colleagues' views, not just his own. It was damning, in that it concluded that some really nasty criminals are playing the system. He didn't have to say #NATW - he is clearly speaking about a small absolute number of incarcerated people, but a substantial minority of the patients he treats.

Why can I not find this submission to Parliament? And why hasn't it been quoted more widely? Obviously TRA won't refer to it, but I haven't seen it much cited by the gender critical side either. It's written clearly, not in medical or legal or academic language IIRC.

I put it on this thread this morning.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3531608-Maria-Miller-on-Twitter

Here is the link:

data.parliament.uk/WrittenEvidence/CommitteeEvidence.svc/EvidenceDocument/Women%20and%20Equalities/Transgender%20Equality/written/19532.html

Here's the most often used quote from it:

The converse is 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 and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this.

LangCleg that's exactly it, thank you. I had forgotten it was submitted directly to Maria Miller. Why is his evidence not more widely cited on GC sites? It's buried where it is now.

What he is saying is brutally clear. It pertains to a small number of people, with devastating consequences. Making this path easier has to be criminal - if that's the right word.

For the record it's:
Dr. James Barrett
President, British Association of Gender Identity Specialists
20 August 2015

It was quoted solidly for the full year after the Miller report.

Barrett’s NHS page: gic.nhs.uk/about-us/the-team/dr-james-barrett/

2016 article: www.theguardian.com/society/2016/jul/11/transgender-nhs-doctor-prescribing-sex-hormones-children-uk

I suspect Barrett is Webberley’s nemesis.

It was Barrett (and 3 others) who reported Russel Reid:

www.theguardian.com/society/2007/may/25/health.medicineandhealth2

Barrett must be a target for TRAs (a la Zucker in Canada) no doubt the activists/trans rights orgs pooh-pooed his sensible comments regarding prisons.

More about Russell Reid: www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/may/25/health.society

Reddit post that alleges Barrett reported Webberley (in the comments):

www.reddit.com/r/transgenderUK/comments/a0b9rb/patient_update_message_from_dr_mike_webberley_not/

Just link followed to this long piece from the Guardian in 2004.

Lots of stories of detransitioners and surgical regret. Difficult reading:

www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/31/health.socialcare

It was also James Barrett who was the key expert supporting Karen Jones, the male prisoner who successfully appealed against the Home Office's refusal to transfer to female estate prior to both obtaining GRC and surgery.
This set an important precedent

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

Crikey. Rabbit Hole alert - The Guardian Weekend Magazine commissioned it’s own research into trans outcomes.

They found no robust scientific evidence that gender reassignment surgery is clinically effective

www.theguardian.com/society/2004/jul/30/health.mentalhealth

I also found 66 pages of Christine Burns (Stephen Whittle’s Press for Change co founder) complaining about trans services (2006)

ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/Health/Essays_In_Trans_Healthcare.pdf

Looks like Barret has changed his mind between 2009 and 2015 - or had some other, undisclosed motivation for supporting Jones (Jones’ victim worked in a transvestite shop so I suppose it can be argued that it wasn’t POGD in Jones’ case - Prison Onset Gender Dysphoria).

Perhaps Barrett has reached Peak Trans?

from link above by Christine Burns:
'Echoes of a Bygone Age'
First Published 20th November 2004
(extract)
"The Parliamentary Forum only meets 2 or 3 times every year. Its strength, however, is that it provides a uniquely strong forum for expert stakeholders from all sides in this field.
Meetings are regularly attended by a healthy contingent of well known practitioners... people like Russell Reid, Kevan Wylie, Domenico de Ceglie and Richard Green are regulars... along
with Dr Joyce Martin, a retired GP who is also a trans woman.
Alongside them sit the leading faces in trans campaigning and support .. including Stephen Whittle, Claire McNab, Tracy Dean, people from groups such as the Gender Trust, GIRES...
and myself.
Then there are specialists in particular areas, such as equal opportunities, policing and nursing.
Last, but not least, there are the MPs who get along regularly too... with Dr Lynne Jones MP in the chair. Very often Dr Evan Harris MP manages to attend too... or sends one of his researchers.
(Evan Harris is a significant figure in this, as he was Liberal Democrat Health Spokesman until recently, when personal circumstances forced him to scale down his commitments).
To get such a broad church to agree on a very detailed document is no mean feat. It has taken literally years... and has come down to a sentence by sentence reading ordeal over the last few meetings of the forum, as all sides managed to agree forms of words to describe the detail and aspirations of trans people's care to mutual satisfaction." (continues)

Christine Burns
cont..
"In the middle of his leaked memo Dr Barrett takes issue with a statement in the Funding Guidelines draft which says quite clearly that "Transsexualism is not a Mental Illness".

This is quite a significant point to get clear of course... principally because if the condition were a mental illness then surgery, whilst perhaps mitigating the symptoms, would not be expected to effect a "cure". We would all still be, to put it bluntly, mentally ill... and potentially unfit to hold our jobs and roles in society as a result.
Fortunately the Government doesn't think we are mentally ill. It has said so in its policies ... after getting to know some of us in far more depth than the average psychiatrist!
In fact the Government is quite unequivocal. It says, [Transsexualism] "is not a mental illness. It is a condition considered in itself to be free of other pathology (though transsexual people can suffer depression or illnesses like anyone else)."
[See www.dca.gov.uk/constitution/transsex/policy.htm ]
Dr Barrett thinks differently though. He says in his leaked memo,
"It would seem to me that it is by definition a mental illness since it is a diagnosis currently appearing in the ICD 10 in the Mental Illness Section" (continues)

I think we need to link this thread up with the Tavi one, what do you think, R0?

Betty YY, there are a few about the situation at the Tavistock I think.

Also relevent to this important one about the long history of TRA's lobbying:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/womens_rights/3463920-Lets-go-back-to-2007