The SPS's review is finally complete. It started in 2018. A tweet by KPSS -
'Today sees the release of the long-awaited revised SPS Police for the Management of Transgender People in Custody. We are astounded and dismayed.
This review has been five long years in the making. The process, which we were invited to take part in, was presented to us as comprising extensive and in-depth research that would provide a firm and methodologically sound evidence base for a new policy with SPS was determined would get it right.
What we have before us is a document so lightweight that it is the most risible attempt at a policy I have seen. Where are the details? Where is the evidence? But, most importantly, where is the safety of women in prison?
After the justifiably outrage when the convicted double rapist Adam Graham was sent to a women’s prison, SPS put in place interim measures to exclude all male prisoners convicted of sexual or violent offences against women or girls from being held in the female estate. Today’s policy sees a departure from this exclusion and puts in place provisions where a male rapist could be transferred to the female estate where the risk he presents to women is deemed “acceptable”. Let’s be quiet clear: there is no degree of risk a convicted rapist presents to women that is ever “acceptable”.
Today’s policy is in marked distinction to the Ministry of Justice police that was released earlier this year:
Where the MoJ excludes male offenders convicted of any sexual or violent offence, the SPS has no problem sending the to a women’s prison so long as the victim was male.
Where the MoJ excludes any male offender with intact male genitalia, the SPS seemingly trusts men to behave themselves provided the haven’t assaulted a woman.
Whilst the MoJ policy represented a marked shift and a positive step that we can look to build on, the SPS policy is shameful.'