AIBU to think this Home Office response is a cop out? - to "Require sex of VATP & sexual offenders be recorded throughout justice system."

[FindTheTruth]

[MN please don't move this to the petitions board].

The home office has responded to "Require sex of VATP & sexual offenders be recorded throughout justice system." They pass the buck and say it is for each individual police force to DECIDE what information to record. And cop out, saying there are ethical and logistical challenges recording biological sex.

Does the home office really believe it's logistically impossible to record the biological sex of rapists when legally Rape can only involve a penis?

And saying that biological sex was not 'defined' in the petition 🙄

I hope that more people sign this petition and that the independent petitions committee tells them to re-write their response.

Extracts from the Government response:
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The Government does not plan to require biological sex to be recorded across the criminal justice system

It is for each individual police force to decide what information to record.

Officials have noted that ‘biological sex’ has not been defined in the petition. If ‘biological sex’ is defined in terms of anatomy, or chromosomes, then there would be both ethical and logistical challenges

it would not be appropriate for the police or HMPPS to physically examine every suspect/prisoner in order to determine ‘biological sex’

there are no plans for the police or HMPPS to record the biological sex of prisoners.

Surely the only possible response to 'well we can't do that because we let people change their legally recognised sex and we didn't foresee this mess' is waiting for the next bit of logical thought which is, 'I suppose we should stop letting people do that'?

Like when my DD12 says she can't find her PE kit because her room is too messy.

I was mostly bothered by:

“Where a full gender recognition certificate is issued to a person, the person’s gender becomes for all purposes the acquired gender (so that, if the acquired gender is the male gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a man and, if it is the female gender, the person’s sex becomes that of a woman).”

So you sign a certificate and poof your penis drops off and you grow a womb. Magic.

Rainbow, If only they'd KonMari the dogma and let in the sunshine in so that facts are allowed again and democracy can work ...

Naughty Step!

This actually really concerns me. It will say what the minister wants it to say, but it will have been cleared by a lawyer.

It is an absolutely outrageous response.

Extraordinary response. Very wordy too, which is liable to be obfuscating and make reporting of it harder.
I hope some journos read this and spend a bit of time report it as clearly as they can.

It's so bizarre, this idea that we can't accurately tell the sex of someone. It'd be like saying we're not going to ask for people's birth date or age because we can't tell the difference between a child and a pensioner

As Errol and PiaPiano have said, I hope journalists cover this. It doesn't help that previous discussions vanished to the petitions board.

This is such a cop out, and the fact that it's coming from a government department is absolutely chilling. Makes all the claims about concerns about VAWG look like the fluff they are.

I got this too. Absolutely infuriating.

Perhaps the MOJ should employ babies who can tell who is male and female from their faces.

Just seen the email. What a pile of waffle.

Currently, the Home Office does not centrally mandate how an offender’s sex or gender identity must be recorded by police. It is for each individual police force to decide what information to record.
Rubbish in, rubbish out.

Does this mean we need to deal with this with every single police force in the country? How the heck can there not be a coherent national policy on this? The prison system doesn't operate within the bounds of policing areas.

Very disappointing on a number of levels.

Also, what does it mean for people with a GRC who have a previous criminal record recorded under their birth details? Is there nothing linking the identities together?? Will those convictions not be considered?

I am so frustrated by this. The government cannot decide what criteria should be used to establish biological sex because it hasn't been defined in the petition! Yet, the term "gender identity" dances all over the page. What's the definition of that?

No YANBU it is is complete cop out.
(Or cock out, or cock up).

It's outrageous and I hope those dinosaur costumes have been through the wash and are drying off for round 2.

I'm furious. Again.

@ComprehensiveTea

This is such a cop out, and the fact that it's coming from a government department is absolutely chilling. Makes all the claims about concerns about VAWG look like the fluff they are.

Chilling - totally agree. Delurking to say how angry I am about this and how scared at how far this has gone.

@BethnalGreenBambinos

I am so frustrated by this. The government cannot decide what criteria should be used to establish biological sex because it hasn't been defined in the petition! Yet, the term "gender identity" dances all over the page. What's the definition of that?

very good point

It seems this guy from Twitter has ended up in government and apparently still hasn't read this.

An Open Letter To the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real

Total cop-out along the lines of 'we didn't think of these issues at the start and so have no intention of redressing the balance now." I'm sure with 'joined up' Government, medical records could be merged....are they really saying it is not an issue medically to know someone's actual birth sex?

If it's apparently impractical to identify people's sex, it seems increasingly important to retain accurate records and not allow them to be corrupted.

The "don't repeal the GRA2004" view is feeling increasingly untenable to me, in the face of stuff like this.

Isn't there just a database the government can look up the offenders sex on, the one where you order both certificates from. Surely this would negate the need for strip searches?

It’s just a nonsense that there isn’t a standard approach, and that it’s left to the individual police depts to decide how they record data. Renders any stats meaningless!

@NecessaryScene

It seems this guy from Twitter has ended up in government and apparently still hasn't read this.

An Open Letter To the Guy on Twitter Who Wonders if Biological Sex is Real

OMG who wrote that and why have I not seen it before?!

I received this pile of guff too.
This looks really bad now but will look much worse when the court cases from women abused in prison start stacking up.

Officials have noted that ‘biological sex’ has not been defined in the petition

I started a petition once and there was a character limit, which is probably why I wasn't asked to provide a lot of details on definitions of commonly understood words and legal terms.