So what constitutes an "exceptional circumstance" then?

[Tacotortoise]

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-67613441

After much mature reflection the Scottish government have now decided that women's prisons are not the place for trans women with a history of harming women. Yay!

...except in "exceptional circumstances ". Not yay.

So can anyone please tell me, what are the exceptional circumstances in which it would be reasonable even to consider sending a rapist or abuser of women to a women's prison?

I can't think of a single one. Which makes me wonder why these weasel words were included at all. Is it to appease trans activists? Or to leave a loophole to carry on as normal? And why don't the press in Scotland ask?

It has been discussed for a while that there are no designated category A prisons for women as there are for men, because there are never more than about a dozen women at most in that category in the entire system.

However if the batshit was permitted to roll on its happy way, there would be a need to open a category A women's wing at the very least.

Except it would be a category A women's wing with no women in it. Because the massive majority of category A women prisoners building up the numbers to require the resource would in fact be be male, and as demonstrated with women with male gender identities, even the prison service realise that when males heavily out number women, not even their risk assessments still work.

I read the other day on another thread here that one third of women prisoners are in for non-payment of the fines subsequent to not having a TV licence. If the bloody TV licence were to be done away with, about 1,300 women of the approximately 4,000 women in jail wouldn't have to be there. They'd be free. That 'crime ' would disappear. Obviously there'd then be one third fewer women available for men who pretend to be women to terrify and traumatise in women's prisons.

A step in the right direction. Unlike the steps Scotland is taking.

In Scotland however the women's prisons will shortly start filling up with women who defiantly and unreasonably refuse to say whatever a man commands, who will not deny reality or accept exclusion and subordination quietly, or wants to be homosexual without hiding it and pretending vigorously that she absolutely would do that male person expressing a woman identity, yes, definitely, would love to, but has this cake to ice.

Because if a man commits a violent crime and has managed to go 10 years without getting caught, that makes him less of a risk?!

If anything it’s worse, because he’s likely smarter and more cunning.

I read the other day on another thread here that one third of women prisoners are in for non-payment of the fines subsequent to not having a TV licence.

That's not correct. It mixes up convictions for non-payment of fines and those convictions that lead to a woman being in prison. It's a zombie "fact" that won't die.

https://fullfact.org/news/liz-truss-tv-licence-prison/

the latest available figures for England and Wales show no one was jailed in 2020 or 2021, and no more than two people were in 2019.

Yes, there are thousands of women convicted each year for non payment of the court ordered fine for not having a TV Licence.

That means that there are thousands of women in prison for not paying a £1,500 ordered by their local magistrates court (possibly in their absence).

That is what most people call 'going to prison for not having a TV Licence' because the vast majority of those women cannot possibly pay the fine and therefore are put in prison.

That is what human rights organisations and women in prison charity are fighting. You've just made a play on words that makes it sound as if that's not the reason women are sent to prison.

Also women are sent to prison for minor and petty shoplifting, often vulnerable women who instead of saying 'no comment' and calling a solicitor say 'oh yes, I must have left the shop without paying for the loaf of bread' = solid conviction for the CPS.

The average professional shoplifter isn't falling down that hole. Ditto the average wise person who didn't have a TV licence and got fined isn't going to fall down the hole of going to prison. Ergo it is the most vulnerable and poverty stricken often much older women who end up in prison for tiny offences.

Women are disproportionately convicted for non violent offences and given far higher sentences than men in general.

I suppose maybe the exceptional circumstance could be something like one of the rarer DSDs, like CAIS?

Well of course women’s safety should be / is paramount, but women in prison in the first place may have committed violent or sexual crimes against other women, so safeguarding in prisons needs to be more nuanced than just a gender view because women can be at risk from other women they are incarcerated with.

I digress. I’m sure any reasonable person would agree that male sex offenders shouldn’t be in a women’s prison.

It's a way of avoiding saying 'male people won't be put into women's prisons.' They don't want to say that. This can still be put into the 'individual risk assessment/case by case' box. So they have a figleaf to shake at the activists.

They're already there. SPS have basically just obscured the data and cloaked everything in bland, vague phrasing.

It will all be absolutely fine. They've told us so, so it will be. And if it isn't then no one will ever know because they've decided they will no longer publish any data about the number of Trans Identified Men in Womens prisons due to data privacy.

web.archive.org/web/20231209021844/www.thetimes.co.uk/article/scottish-prison-service-to-hide-data-on-trans-women-lv8wzp5rf

So it will all be absolutely fine, nothing to seem nothing to worry about.

Anyone who has the most strongest of lady feels, stronger than that of a born woman's.

Because men's opinions trump women's every day of the week!

Do you like jail with a Man
I do not like them, ban the Man

Would you like them in a cell
Would you want them to wear a bell

would you like them with a smirk
Would you like them to wear a skirt

Would you like them in your shower
Would you like them to wear a flower

We do not like them. Ban the Man
Not in a cell. Not with a bell.
Not with a smirk. Not in a skirt
Not in the shower. Not with a flower

We’ve tried it and we do not like it.

I’m sure there’s more, and apologies and acknowledgment to Dr Seuss

People who put caviats like that into law, are not to be trusted. Because as we all know, the exceptional circumstances will be abused.

That's right.

If everybody pretends that 'Naomi' is a woman, and nobody mentions Naomi's penis, then everything is just fine. Nothing to see here.

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/4959651-predatory-woman-who-incited-man-to-abuse-child-4-jailed

Funnily enough, the Prison Service does recognise that safeguarding of vulnerable prisoners is quite important. They were a bit shit before Zahid Mubarak's murder, sadly, but things have improved. I'm not saying that prisons are lovely safe wonderful places, but safeguarding itself is taken very seriously, thousands and thousands of man-hours are devoted to it and the default position is that if a prisoner is believed to be vulnerable, the Prison Service puts controls in place to protect that individual.

Sex is immutable. Male prisoners go to male prisons, regardless of their leggings or wigs. Female prisoners go to female prisons.

Did you even bother to read the post you were replying to, or click on the link? This is from the link that @nauticant posted.

You cannot be sent to prison for failing to pay a TV licence fee, only for failing to pay a court-imposed fine in connection with a conviction for not paying the fee. Being imprisoned for this offence is rare—the latest available figures for England and Wales show no one was jailed in 2020 or 2021, and no more than two people were in 2019.

Ministry of Justice statistics for England and Wales show that during 2020 and 2021, no convictions resulted in prison sentences, meaning no women - or men - were jailed. During 2019, two or fewer people were sent to prison (the exact number is not given in the statistics to protect against personal identification), none of whom were women.

Between 1995 and 2018, a total of 1,449 men were jailed for the offence compared to 754 women, suggesting that in fact men may be disproportionately more likely to be jailed. This ratio does vary depending on the time period looked at though. Over the last ten years, for instance, a slightly higher proportion of those jailed are women (53%), while over the last five years that figure is 46%.

People with DSDs, of which CAIS is one of the more common ones, have a sex. They are not special cases because there are many health and genetic conditions which people who are being given custodial sentences have and which will require accommodations.

Just because someone has a condition which is completely irrelevant to gender (but that Stonewall hijacked to try and make it look like sex is a spectrum) doesn't mean they get to cause fear or alarm or lack of privacy for incarcerated women.

High numbers of women are convicted in relation to non-payment of TV Licence. So they go through the court system but are not necessarily locked up for it. Women who are in prison have generally committed relatively minor offences though. As the info on the government website stated, 98% of sex offences are committed by males.

https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmjust/265/report.html#heading-1

The point is that if we're going to put forward arguments, we shouldn't base them on false "facts". Even if the false "facts" appear to support our cause. Doing that is just giving a gift to our opponents.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-publishes-response-to-decriminalising-tv-licence-evasion

As at 30 June 2020, there were zero people in prison for failing to pay the fine in respect of the non-payment of a TV licence in England and Wales.

Thanks @OldCrone. I looked at that reply to my post and couldn't be arsed to argue. I thought I'd rely on people here who did bother read what was actually in my post.

They didn't jail anyone in most of 2020 and 2021 because the courts weren't operating for such discussions because of covid lockdowns and backlog. In fact prisoners on lengthy sentences got released. The courts were in a terrible state they couldn't even do removal orders on abused children. Let's see what the current state of play is now the courts have just about caught up with themselves again and see what the stats for 2023 and 2024 bring.

Here are the figures for 1995 to 2018. They have been falling steadily during that period to zero in 2020 and 2021. Sorry about the formatting, it's from one of the links in the link nauticant posted. It's here if you want to look. The link goes straight to an excel spreadsheet.

https://qna.files.parliament.uk/qna-attachments/1183645/original/PQ%2026808_final%20response%20tablel.xlsx

Table 1: Number of sentenced admissions to prison for non-payment of fine associated with using a TV without a licence, by sex; 1995-2018, England & Wales

Year Total Male Female
1995 728 493 235

1996 327 238 89

1997 232 171 61

1998 145 104 41

1999 80 56 24

2000 36 24 12

2001 30 21 9

2002 14 12 2

2003 29 26 3

2004 41 30 11

2005 37 25 12

2006 39 33 6

2007 39 26 13

2008 44 27 17

2009 39 15 24

2010 53 23 30

2011 57 14 43

2012 62 32 30

2013 39 20 19

2014 41 12 29

2015 38 18 20

2016 29 17 12

2017 19 11 8

2018 5 1 4

I'm sorry but no-one should be sent to jail for non payment of tv license fines. These days you can opt out, if someone is not opting out then they're probably quite vulnerable. Lots of people can't just find £1,500. What happens if these women can't pay and get sent to jail to their children? Is the state really separating mothers from their children and putting the children in care because they can't afford to pay the - extremely high - tv license (fine)? That's literally insane and evil during a cost of living crisis.

No one here has said that women or men should be sent to jail for non-payment of TV licence fines.

The discussion is that a claim like:

That means that there are thousands of women in prison for not paying a £1,500 ordered by their local magistrates court (possibly in their absence).

is clearly false, and that it's counter-productive to use false "facts" just because they appear to support our arguments.

I'm sorry but no-one should be sent to jail for non payment of tv license fines.

So it's good that it hardly ever (or possibly never) happens any more, isn't it?