Keep Prison Single Sex closing

[TinselAngel]

Just announced on Twitter.

x.com/noxyinxxprisons/status/1798973161276412028?s=46&t=PSGltfjrMyZmBtYq2-AVIQ

"After considerable thought we have decided to close KPSS down. Our last day of operation will be 30th June 2024.

We have agreed that Kate will continue to support and work with the individual prisoners, former offenders, and CJS whistleblowers with whom we have relationships. Kate is contacting everyone individually to advise them of this.

We have some materials still available and can post these out to whomever wants them: our email address will remain live, so please use this to contact us. All reports and leaflets are also available on our website which, together with our Vimeo, we will maintain as a resource, although content will not be updated.

It is no longer possible to make a donation to KPSS and all regular donations have been cancelled - however, please do check your own accounts. Our PayPal account is now closed. Both KPSS shops have been closed.

KPSS USA is unaffected by this decision. Their work will continue. Please give them a follow @NoXY_USA Any funds remaining after closing down KPSS will be transferred to them.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us. Between us we achieved some truly great things, including two Ministry of Justice policy changes that centre the safety and rights of women in prison. Be proud of what you have done, because none of what KPSS achieved would have been possible without you."

Yes not housing male criminals in female prisons does make those women safer.

You're not going to convince anyone here you're sad about vulnerable women.

Drunk again Fred?

.

Men shouldn't be in women's prisons. That we are losing KPSS is a great shame.

if you haven’t watched it yet, please watch Kate’s interview with Andrew Gold on Heretics. Very good. Lots of nuggets in there, including ‘around 40 T-fuelled TIFs in Scottish prisons’ - the female ones of course - and being a nightmare to manage.

Those are not lobby groups.
one is a human rights org and the other is an support network for families.

im not a fan of stonewall in it's current state, they have lost their way since Nancy Kellie left.

Mermaids continues to give support to the families of a tiny number of children who need a bit of community suppprt.

all the comments on this post seem ignorant and prove my initial point

Well done Kate for all that you have achieved. Women are safer now than before from creepy men. They really do try and infiltrate everywhere.

More wine to go with that cheese Fred?

i'm not on twitter so I've remained relatively unaware of the differences of opinion re things like the GRC.

But this is one of the sticking points?

We do not think that we can solve the conflation between sex and self-declared “gender identity” so simply, since GRCs give holders the right to be considered as members of the opposite sex for certain legal purposes.

We also disagreed with a legal opinion commissioned by FairCop with KPSS. That opinion concluded that a GRC gives a male police officer the right to search female detainees. We strongly disagree with this: a government-issued piece of paper cannot override women’s fundamental human rights. We think the opinion erred in law.

I'm sure no-one reasonable thinks women should be searched by men. But that's the point, isn't it? Who's going to decide what's legally allowed and what's not legally allowed? And who will be the arbiter of all the other 'certain legal purposes'. And what are they? Why should there be any?

What am I missing?

They don't say how they think the opinion erred in law. This would seem crucial to understanding the difference between the two positions.

If SM think the legal opinion was wrong because the law actually does not say this (or for whatever reason), why not set it out? That information seems to be MIA.

I think the difference in opinion all boils down to the GRA.

And because it is a legal fiction, it is hard to parse exactly what rights that would give the member of the opposite sex in relation to a person.

It needs repealing entirely.

Thanks for all your work on this. The sad thing is I think most people would be in favour of keeping prisons single-sex but even asking the question is difficult as language has become mangled.

But when Maya wanted to take legal action against her employer the legal advice based on the law was that the most likely route to success was under the belief protected characteristic. That victory seems to have set the path for everything that has followed. Of course it is insane to classify the immutability of sex as a belief when we all know it's a fact. But here we are. The foundations were laid and now the building has to sit on them. Even though they are probably the wrong shape.

Bit of a tangent, but I used to think the same - it's not a "belief"! But there was some great discussion on here a while ago.

Basically you don't want the law to be able to dictate what is fact - material reality - or not. Because laws can be changed, they are written by consensus, and if a law is passed stating that 1=2 or beef isn't meat or homosexuality is a mental illness or breastfeeding is better than formula, then that causes serious problems.

Right. Because of course having a man search a woman would appear to be a violation of her human rights.

But What other 'legal position' would not be a violation of a woman's human rights?

I think so. Which really means...do we spend another five years tinkering at the edges and wasting time on "what if this, what if that" about men with special pieces of paper, or do we spend our spare time and effort on a project to repeal the GRA?

We could lose a lot of time. It needs serious thought as to the advantages, disadvantages, and the results and consequences of that.

This is time that TRAs will spend on groups such as that APPG which seemed to have an enormous amount of influence for example.

Exactly. Who gets to decide.

We've got another article where a man who killed his partner with a sword is being referred to as a woman. Is that the sort of allowed legal right?

Because that would mean women couldn't identify men as the perpetrators of violence. Does that not count?

(Turns out both people in question are male but only the killer gets referred to as a woman. Someone speculated it's because they had a GRC!)

KPSS deserve enormous credit for their work on prison policy in England and Wales, which means that there are now almost no TW in women's prisons, except a tiny handful with GRCs who have undergone surgical treatment and have not been convicted of violent or sexual crimes.

The problem with repealing the GRA is that doing so would put us immediately in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights. This means that a) it's not going to happen under a Labour or moderate Conservative government and b) Sex Matters, as a human rights charity, cannot really argue for a measure which would require the UK to withdraw from the ECHR which is the framework of human rights law in this country.

We spend so much time haggling over which rights we should be allowed to keep when someone else has a certificate or doesn't have a certificate that says lies, that we lose sight of the fact that this whole law is and always was flawed from the start.

An approach that would have more likelihood of success then would seem to be clarification of the PC sex in the Equality Act, and ensuring that the human rights provisions for women to not be searched by or receive intimate care from males (regardless of identity) are more robustly applied. GRCs remain, but really are 'just a piece of paper'

Sloejelly · Today 08:48

More wine to go with that cheese...

More like sour milk to go with they's soggy scornflakes.

They absolutely deserve a lot of credit. I agree.

The ECHR also doesn't stop us depriving someone of their liberty (DOLS applications, sending people to prison, or MH sectioning) or removing minors from their parents.

I don't believe repeal isn't possible. What I do increasingly believe though, is that there are quarters in which discussing it is seen as a problem. Why, I don't know. But I worry it's because deals are being done. We've been fucked over so many times now. Trust is wafer thin, or gone.

Yah. That's why Radical Feminism was born in the first place.

The problem with repealing the GRA is that doing so would put us immediately in breach of the European Convention of Human Rights. This means that a) it's not going to happen under a Labour or moderate Conservative government and b) Sex Matters, as a human rights charity, cannot really argue for a measure which would require the UK to withdraw from the ECHR which is the framework of human rights law in this country.

Right. But that would be the conversation to have, wouldn't it? How do we do it?

Because the other conversation - we can't do it. so we have to decide where it matters - needs explaining.

If a GRC gives a man any kind of legal right as a woman, whatsoever, what is it?

Because the example was a man searching a woman. My question is on what basis do you decide that a man is a legal woman for certain things, but not others.

If a labour government is going to make a GRC a piece of piss to get, well more of a piece of piss than it already is, it's absolutely the conversation to have.

This!!