'BBC: 'Eleven transgender inmates sexually assaulted in male prisons last year'

[missproportionate]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52748117

I haven't seen a thread about this but I find it hard to get my head round.

"of 124 sexual assaults in five women's jails over the previous nine years, from 2010 to 2018, seven had been carried out by trans prisoners.'

Also I just can't get the stats right in my head from the way they are quoted. The semantics are twisted in knots, and anyone not familiar with any of this would find it impenetrable.

[ShootsFruitAndLeaves]

This is typical deceitful BBC reporting.

They don't publish the figures for last year for women's prisons, but do for men, so the totals aren't comparable.

By my reckoning as much as 1% of prisoners in women's prison are male. And they committed at least 6% of the sexual assaults.

Probably more.

Also most transgender prisoners are sex offenders, locked up with sex offenders, so they will be more likely to be sexually assaulted. You'd want to compare sex offenders who identify as trans with those who don't.

And even then, the solution to excess sexual assaults is not to send the transgender sex offenders to womens prison where they are more likely to sexually assault women.

Start by working out how to protect sex offenders from other sex offenders.

[Oncewasblueandyellowtwo]

Kantastic

How long have male bodied prisoners been able to self identify into a female prison, that is without a GRC.It's not 9 years is it?

[MockersxxxxxxxSocialDistancing]

The gist of it, so far as I can make out, is that letting transwomen self-ID into women's prisons will result in fewer assaults than forcing them to stay in men's prisons and be assaulted.

But it's apples, oranges, pomegranates and kumquats, all self-iding as bananas.

[Kantastic]

Oh, the Daily Mail provides a little more context. Transwomen first started moving to women's prisons in 2016.

So.124 sexual assaults in women's prisons 2010-2018. Let's assume the yearly figures are constant, in the absence of other evidence.
That would mean 41 sexual assaults in the years 2016-2018.

Of those, seven, or 17%, were committed by transwomen without a GRC.

Fuck off, BBC.

[Kantastic]

A little bit more context - the BBC says there are 34 transwomen prisoners in women's prisons.
There are 3641 female prisoners as of March this year.

So 17% of the sexual assaults are committed by

[Oncewasblueandyellowtwo]

Kan

That makes a massive difference.Thanks for that.

I've seen TRAs use the stats of 7 sexual assaults by trans women and 124 by women to say that women are more at risk by "cis" women.

[Kantastic]

I've seen TRAs use the stats of 7 sexual assaults by trans women and 124 by women to say that women are more at risk by "cis" women.

They are lying loathsome bastards. Fuck them.

[QuentinWinters]

I think this is a result of PR by some transgender charity (looks like stonewall)
They are basically saying a trans woman is more likely to be assaulted than to commit assault (7 assaults by TW vs 11 on TW) and anyway women get assaulted in prison by other women too (117 over 5 years - plus the 7 by TW makes 124)

I am suspicious it might be like when mens rights charities compare rates of domestic abuse rather than domestic violence. I'd want to check the assaults are comparable (e.g.are they comparing criminally recorded assaults with reports of sexual harrassment).

As PP says, I'd also want to know how many men are assaulted in mens prison as I think that's more likely to be the problem than "gender identity".

[Kantastic]

BW i think I have got that sum wrong while doing ragemaths- I think transwomen are "only" 21 times more likely to assault women prisoners, not 83 times.
I have ADHD and can be pretty careless with my arithmetic sometimes but seriously FUCK the BBC , that article pissed me off too much to think straight.

[ScapaFlo]

Ragemaths - love it

[Kantastic]

Now I think about it the evidence that they are 21x more likely to assault other prisoners is pretty close to the findings in the Swedish study (that the author tried to disappear by breaking her population into subgroups where N was too small for statistical significance.)

Weren't transwomen approximately 20 times more violent than actual women in that study? That was a study of the general population not the prison population so it's quite interesting that the ratio is the same.

[Oncewasblueandyellowtwo]

Your're doing a great job Kan

Why are they making it out like it's 7 trans prisoners since 2010.
It makes sense if they start allowing men to self identify & be moved to female prisons around 2016, since Stonewall started to included the T in 2015.

[Floisme]

I'm sure any vulnerable male would be at risk in a men's prison. If I had a close relative or friend there I would be out of my mind with worry. But however the numbers stack up, it is still not up to women to protect them.

[FWRLurker]

It’s all “lies, damn lies, and statistics” is it not?

[NeedToKnow101]

They should be comparing sexual assaults against transgender to sexual assaults against other men.

[FWRLurker]

Important questions:
what proportion of gay men are assaulted in prison in the same period?

What proportion of natal male trans prisoners were assaulted in the same period in the male and female prisons?

What proportion of natal female trans prisoners were assaulted in the same period in male and female prisons?

I suspect male trans prisoners will have experienced assault in the male estate at a similar or possibly higher frequency than gay male prisoners but both will be higher than straight male prisoners.

Female trans prisoners in the male estate are very rare I think so may be hard to interpret.

Obvious Solution is a third space for all vulnerable male prisoners. Gender “identity” is no way to segregate people for safety.

[FWRLurker]

Oh also, I am guessing that many of the remainder of the assaults on women are by male prison officers and other staff, not other women, but the information is not provided to assess this. Also some men are assaulted by male prison officers.

[ILikeSardines]

The interesting bit was that they were keen to point out

'The total number of transgender victims far exceeds the number who were suspected of carrying out sex attacks, with only one such case in 2019.'

[ILikeSardines]

I mean the message they want people to get is v obvious.

I was surprised they mentioned Karen white.

[TreestumpsAndTrampolines]

I was surprised they mentioned Karen white.

You've got to season your misdirection with a little bit of truth - makes it easier to swallow.

[ILikeSardines]

Also for 'balance'

[PaleBlueMoonlight]

Are there any records of how many transwomen with GRCs there are in the women’s estate? Or is it something unknowable because it is not/cannot be recorded?

[TreestumpsAndTrampolines]

According to Fair Play For Women:

fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-prisoners/

Some claim that the figure of 125 trans prisoners is too low, because the MoJ does not count prisoners on short sentences, people with a Gender Recognition certificate or people who do not declare they are trans. They say 60 sex offenders does not represent half of the trans population in prison, it’s a much smaller fraction.

So it wouldn't include those with a GRC

[Yr1parent]

One women’s prison opened a transgender unit after Karen White and at the time, said it would hold 3 inmates, all of whom had GRC’s.

Why don’t other prisons take note and separate trans prisoners? Surely then it’s a win-win of ‘validation’ and safety.

[Kantastic]

Or is it something unknowable because it is not/cannot be recorded?

It can't be recorded. But we know, thanks to one of the most dedicated monitors of this site, (whose name I won't mention here as it would result in the comment being reported and legal threats being issued to the mods), that being a violent criminal is no barrier to receiving a GRC. And of course, being a violent criminal comes with considerable incentives to apply for a GRC. If said monitor were to go to prison it would be straight to the women's estate regardless of any risk posed to female prisoners. So there's no reason to assume the numbers are negligible.