MOJ Prison Policy JR TODAY

[ChazsBrilliantAttitude]

Just seen on Twitter.

Will post links

That is just disgusting. Truly horrific.

Is this what female prisoners have to expect on their incarceration, not just a loss of liberty but the additional punishment of being raped or sexually assaulted or the constant fear that they might be? If that isn't cruel and unusual punishment I don't know what is.

Especially when you consider that most women who end up in prison do so for non-violent reasons (compared with 70% of men), 53 per cent) of female prisoners suffered sexual, physical or emotional abuse as a child (27 per cent of male inmates). They are nearly twice as likely to suffer depression than men and account for 26 per cent of self-harm incidents in England and Wales despite only representing 5 per cent of the prison population. (Source: Prison Reform Trust)

But yes, lets think about the mental health of transwomen first...

When you think about the high bar that health and safety legislation sets for risk mitigation and the almighty force of the law that comes down on an organistion in the event of a significant failing/accident/death, it is quote astonishing that MOJ is A-ok with women being raped and sexually assaulted in their facilities due to an entirely predictable risk not being avoided or mitigated. It is hardly rocket science.

Something I've thought - on a guilty verdict the policy makes it compulsory to send a tw with a grc to a women's prison. Not the case if they don't have a grc. That's a new policy change. Policy development in this area is heavily influenced by the trans rights movement through the various organisations. Without them these policies would not be in place.

So at the same time the trans rights movement was both

• arguing for self id to make it really easy to gain a grc by saying 'its just an admin issue, it only affects the trans person, its no one else's business' etc

And -securing a policy which puts all prisoners with a grc in women's prisons, as default, with no thought for the effect on women.

My solution. How about, they don't place any males in the female estate. If they have a GRC they can apply to have it considered and risk assessed, but they will of necessity have to disclose that status to the prison.

I can see the argument potentially being made by TRAs that other MTF trans people without GRC need to be in the female estate otherwise the obviously male GRC holders will be "outed", which contravenes the privacy clauses in the GRA. It's all such a tangled web of deception. And it needs to stop.

As a woman if you are raped in prison do you have any recourse to justice? Or do they just remove the rapist and that’s it?

Something I've thought - on a guilty verdict the policy makes it compulsory to send a tw with a grc to a women's prison. Not the case if they don't have a grc. That's a new policy change. Policy development in this area is heavily influenced by the trans rights movement through the various organisations. Without them these policies would not be in place.

So at the same time the trans rights movement was both

• arguing for self id to make it really easy to gain a grc by saying 'its just an admin issue, it only affects the trans person, its no one else's business' etc

And -securing a policy which puts all prisoners with a grc in women's prisons, as default, with no thought for the effect on women.

YY exactly this.

However, Sarah Hannett, representing the MoJ, said the claim was based on "a tiny data sample of seven sexual assaults over ... a four-year period", from which it was "impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion".

I must be dead smart then because if I screw my eyes up and think really really hard I am able to draw a meaningful conclusion.

As a justice worker I have my fingers crossed for this.

The ONLY use for a GRC is to change your birth certificate. Prison allocations are initially made according to legal sex - what's on the birth certificate.

So tw prisoners with a birth certificate that says F are automatically placed in the female estate and are not even recorded anywhere as trans.

Tw prisoners with a birth certificate that says M are 'risk assessed' before being placed in the female estate

Interesting, langclgsinspace

I have to assume that they’re not actually, physically checking people’s birth certificates, either, though, right? Because if you’ve been sentenced, you’re marched out of the dock and off to prison you go. You wouldn’t have the document with you.

And we’re aware from the hoo ha with the census that the central record keeping of who has had their documentation changed is, at best erratic.

So who is checking what, and at what stage of the game?

In a massive rush - PMK.

@DeaconBoo

However, Sarah Hannett, representing the MoJ, said the claim was based on "a tiny data sample of seven sexual assaults over ... a four-year period", from which it was "impossible to draw any meaningful conclusion".

I must be dead smart then because if I screw my eyes up and think really really hard I am able to draw a meaningful conclusion.

Clearly everyone on this thread is a fucking genius then. Perhaps the MoJ should recruit from Mumsnet to take advantage of our superior pattern recognition.

KPSS seemed to lose a thread and are now redoing it. From them:

LJH: why don’t you count the TW with GRCs? Seems otherwise you have a policy that is just a piece of paper? How can you apply this to prisoners if you don’t know who they are?
SH: Collecting this data may be criminal under GRA. This is the reason why this is not collected.

Swift: Surely you need to know? Can’t you just keep an anonymous record that there are x TWs with GRC in this prison?

SH: MoJ is aware of a number in single digits. But also need to factor in that there may be those TW with GRCs who did not transition in prison and who pass & we simply do not know who they are
LJH: So you have a policy that can only apply to some but not all trans prisoners?

@NecessaryScene1

They recommended the first because it was important to provide transwomen with 'association with other women'.

Umm... Hang on. They had 3 transwomen. And they needed "association with other women". How would not putting the 3 transwomen together not achieve this?

Quite. And there's another inconsistency in their 'thinking', there was that paedophile who was denied SRS because 'living as a woman' in a prison environment wasn't considered sufficient evidence of living as a woman A paedophile's penis was given more consideration than the feelings of female prisoners who are being used as a sandbox for male prisoners with identity issues.

I just keep hearing Jacob Rees-Mogg.

"Other people have rights too."

As a woman if you are raped in prison do you have any recourse to justice?

Probably only the same level of justice that other women get which is close to zero :)

I know it’s crap Signal but some women do get police investigations, court cases and convictions. Do women in prison get anything - is there any kind of system?

@ARoombaOfOnesOwn

As a woman if you are raped in prison do you have any recourse to justice? Or do they just remove the rapist and that’s it?

In theory yes.

In practice you have to challenge the MoJ which makes the process stacked against a woman prison who has to fund the legal side of this and has to prove negligence. Remembering that in many cases women in prison have a history of being unreliable witnesses with little credibility. Thats also neglecting the emotional toll of going up against a government institution.

So they have the entire weight of the system stacked against them regardless of whatever path to recourse they might have.

Perhaps in a Kool-Aid drinking hearing about all this, the other line of argument needs to be made to get through to them.

Women will not accept transwomen in prison with them. Women in prison tend to have had difficult childhoods or early life, up to and including a history of being assaulted by men or otherwise disempowered by them in really big ways like physical assault.

Women in prison will, at the first whiff of a transwoman looking at them funny or "accidentally" touching them, gang up on the transwoman at the first opportunity. The result will be akin to that rabbit that killed a snake after it ate her babies.

Therefore transwomen will not be safe in women's prisons.

Prison doctors aren't likely to be ofé on medical management of trans issues (assuming, just for this line of argument, that any medical transitioners are the beneficiaries of this law).

They need to be housed in a wing to themselves in one prison, where the prison doctor can stay on top of all the extra stuff he or she needs to understand to manage a medical transition. Where natal female guards are not at risk of being overpowered by someone physically bigger than them who could then escape or get at the women.

Natal women should not be housed in the same cell as transwomen, but they shouldn't be housed in the same wing, either. For the safety of everyone involved. And this should be the case for anyone trying to get into a women's prison.

Of course natal women need protecting, but the people making this stupid new law don't care about that, so reframe it in terms they understand. Trans women will be at risk in women's prisons, too. And trans men will be at huge risk in men's prisons.

X-posted there Red. Thank you.

Is there another example of a legal identity document that is to be kept secret at all costs, can't be asked for and can't even be known about without an individual disclosing it?

It just seems completely insane to get this Secret Fucking Squirrel certificate so that you can change your birth certificate to a legal fiction and no one can ever know.

Then to base policy on the production of this Top Secret Certificate which an individual can't be asked about nor be compelled to admit exists is too ludicrous to be believed.

I take my hats off to judges at times like these. They must have will of steel not to get visibly angered or incredulous.

I doubt very much that either medical records or birth certificates are checked, for so many people they would not even know where their records are, not registered in the UK etc. it must all be taken on face value or an id/driving licence used (which of course can say anything). If I get a GRC, and then someone requests my birth cert, has the person in the registry office actually gone back and scribbled out the info, or has a new cert just been issued with different info?
would the original info on the orginal record be what is provided?

@highame

I bloody hope Penny Mordaunt is watching this

Penny doesn't give a fuck. She was told about this risk when she was Minister for Women, and her response was twaw, talk to the hand MoJ if you have a problem.

Minister for Women who didn’t/doesn’t GAF about women.

Fancy that...