Our first post of 2024 presents our final piece of work for 2023. Policing and holding forces to account has become an increasingly important part of our work.
Whilst we agree that national guidance is urgently required, we are concerned that the NPCC has chosen to bow to ideology. Unsurprisingly, there is much to object to in the NPCC document. Possibly the most egregious example is the instruction for recording sex, where forces are instructed that the available options are: male; female; intersex.
It is inaccurate, deeply offensive and ludicrous to state that people who've been diagnosed with differences in sex development are neither male nor female. Sex is a binary: everyone is either male or female, and the existence of these very rare medical conditions does not establish the existence of either “no sex” or “additional sexes”. That the NPCC appear to be unable to comprehend this is cause for concern.
What is a more wide-reaching problem is the NPCC’s inability to understand the purpose of data collection by police forces. This is not to comply with ideology. Nor it is only to enable forces to comply with their public sector equality duties under the Equality Act. The primary and overriding importance of data collection by police forces is to produce accurate, relevant and reliable data that enables service provision and development throughout the criminal justice system.
Full article here https://kpss.substack.com/p/police-to-record-intersex-as-a-third
(This was published on 1 January 2024 and I couldn't find a thread so have posted, as much as a point of information as for any discussion.)