Custody officer job withdrawn for GC beliefs - Gribbon (SP legal team) is his solicitor

[InterrobangsArePureBias]

I wonder how many more of such actions will be launched. To adapt Jimmy Doyle’s phrase, “the spectacle of this nation’s [lanyard classes] enforcing moral auto-lobotomy as a condition of entry to [employment]”.

A prison custody officer who was sacked for saying he would not address male-born transgender inmates as ‘she’ or ‘her’ has launched legal action against one of the UK’s largest security firms.
Army veteran David Toshack, 50, was dismissed by GEOAmey during a training course only days before taking up a role as a prison custody officer (PCO) at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court.
The father of three told a safeguarding workshop that he would not be comfortable using a transgender inmates’ preferred gender pronouns and expressed his belief that a man could not become a woman.
It sparked a horrified reaction from bosses at the firm, which employs thousands of justice workers across the UK, who said his views were against the law and company policy.
…
He said: ‘I’m just a normal, working class person who’s never been in trouble with the law before, not got a criminal record, lived a good life. I’ve been prepared to go and fight and die for my country, and then I have come back here and been told that there’s certain things you can’t think or can’t say.’

https://archive.is/bxjqC

Original story about David Toshack in Daily Mail: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14963309/Prison-custody-officer-sacked-refusing-call-male-born-trans-prisoners-her.html

If someone is in a male prison and calling themself by a female name it will be obvious that they are not female. If they were born female they would be in a woman's prison. If they are in a woman's prison then the argument about potentially revealing confidential information may have some value.

This firm deals with prisoner transport so potentially he could be taking someone who is trans to or from a court or providing security within a court.

So not a walk in the park exactly, apart from not following proper procedure.

anyolddinosaur just to note in passing that, because so few women are imprisoned (4% of the prison population) the contractors providing transport do not normally supply women-only transport. They are meant to but there is a get-out clause in the contract with HMPPS which allows them to provide mixed-sex transport if it would be too costly to provide a women-only service.

Typically, en route to prison the men will be dropped off first and the woman or women (usually singular) will arrive later at her/their prison(s), sometimes well "after hours". Conditions during transportation are not good for women. They routinely report that they endure several hours of threats, sexualised verbal abuse and behaviour from the men transported with them.

Bear in mind that the majority of women are sent to prison for non-violent crimes such as shoplifting whereas the men are much more likely to have been convicted of violent crimes and/or sexual offences.

The issue of mixed-sex transportation between courts and prisons is regularly highlighted in women's prison inspections and in in women's prisons Independent Monitoring Board (IMB) reports.

However, transportation is not monitored by IMBs but by volunteer Court Service Lay Observers. While it is reasonable to expect Lay Observers to inspect conditions in court custody suites it is unrealistic to expect volunteers to travel for hours with prisoners to their destinations and it is also not clear how they would get back home again.

What will I do as a Lay Observer?

Lay Observers are volunteers who have full access to court custody suites and the vehicles on which detained people are transported. You will monitor and assess to what extent those held and transported are treated with decency and respect and how effectively their welfare is being managed. This will involve speaking to detained people and court staff as well as inspecting the conditions in which they are held and transported. You will be expected to make a minimum of 2 visits per month with the possibility of more for those who choose.

https://layobservers.org/about-us/the-role/

Prison transportation is essentially unmonitored and women are specifically and spectacularly disadvantaged because contractors do not have ring-fenced funding for women-only transportation.

Also in the Times now:
https://www.thetimes.com/article/5f77959d-7b28-4ee4-a511-3b6290d25aa3?shareToken=7114db9f1b325bac99c9d8a736ec2218

He probably will win the tribunal, just not quite as clear cut as people have suggested. There would be little chance of him coming across a man who passed and if he did he could still have referred to them by their chosen name.

Had they employed him and then sacked him because he was transporting a man identifying as female and he could be considered to have "outed" them it would be different. Not giving him the job can only be because he held gc views so I still expect him to win.

Toshack claimed that he would use the preferred name and non-gendered but not female pronouns according to the FSU piece upthread.

Archive

archive.ph/OPc71

A heads-up that this tribunal will start next Wednesday, 28 January, and Tribunal Tweets will be covering it. Should be interesting.

From Dr. Kath Murray on X, "This case will see Scottish Prison Service policy (as followed by Geo Amey) in the spotlight, immediately ahead of the FWS judicial review".

Thank you for heads up.

There is a safeguarding element here for the male prisoner and the prison guards. There's a H&S element too.

Using wrong-sex pronouns obfuscates the truth. Men have 162% the punch power of women. Whether an inmate is male or female will matter in terms of how they are handled (e.g. how many prison officers need to attend if they're being violent, and what sex those prison officers need to be). There is potential for huge harm if everyone isn't clear about sex.

Physical reality and safety should matter more than the feelings of one man (because let's face it no-one cares about the feelings of any females in the vicinity).

In this context "If someone is in a male" is a sex based bias.

Based on who would put a woman into a Male Prison?

If someone is in a male prison and calling themself by a female name it will be obvious that they are not female.

Why?
We know that in the UK the prison system allows male people into female prisons and female people into male prisons.

If they were born female they would be in a woman's prison.

Would she?
(Yes We do know why but must pretend we dont)

This is a service provider not the Prison Authority they dont control the allocation of prison places

If they are in a woman's prison then the argument about potentially revealing confidential information may have some value.

So the employer could say that his not using male pronouns for a female inmate in a male prison fell within the scope of the Act.

Now the newspaper headlines would be Epic.

HMPS place women in mens prison...

Man sacked for objecting to women being put in mens prisons...

Why is that not a problem headline?

Because I will guess the safeguarding bits and the objections were only focused on Male Rights

Did safeguarding not cover how the male PO to strip search a female man and record the details?

"I put my hand on her breast"
"I put my hand on her chest"

"I put my hand on his chest"

@ItsCoolForCats thanks for the HU👍

Dunno. I identify as the Empress Theodora III of the Galadian Empire which exists forty thousand years in the future. Can I insist on being addressed as 'Imperial Majesty'? If not, why not?

Unless he would have been similarly treated for refusing to agree to women's single sex rights, and for expressing activist bias in the workplace, it'll be a straight forward discrimination/unequal treatment job.

Which is the part the activists can't get, because being impartial is heresy.

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PUBLIC ACCESS REQUEST- 27/1/26 8001392/2025 Mr D G Toshack - GEOAmey Limited Bellshill

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It is listed as starting at 10am on the 27th January.

I think a Scottish tribunal may well be reluctant to accept that most transwomen don't pass. They didn't accept that for Upton, did they? (I appreciate that this one may get a different tribunal judge). This will be an interesting one. The tribunal may hold that using someone's chosen pronouns at work is a reasonable instruction from the employer. It's not quite the same thing, I know, but I imagine it would be a reasonable instruction to require a hospital or school canteen worker who strongly believes that cows are a holy animal to serve pork.

I mean beef, obv

The whole passing thing is a complete red herring as so often referred to here, and it takes two minutes thought to confirm that it's ridiculous. The ones (apparently) deceiving non consenting women in the world everywhere so well that they've never been spotted aren't the problem anyway, it's the ones wanking in women's facilities and posting on porn forums about it while inciting and encouraging this abuse of women, the ones with beards and swords and terrifyingly violent sexual ideation, and the ones who blatantly obviously are men. The myth of the first is purely to leverage the access of the second.

No one is going to issue a pass to one bloke that says 'you' but 'not you' to another bloke. Who is going to decide anyway? On what criteria? How fantastically cruel is that in principle? Will the pass be revoked if a woman spots them? And who stands on the door of every facility checking passes?

And still what do we do with the women who do not consent to share space and cannot share space even with lovely, pretty men? And who have rights too. Equal to those of men. And are not merely a backdrop of NPCs on which men can paint their fascinating inner selves and 'journeys'.

There is also no getting away from the fact that compelled pronouns involves required performance and participation in an unheld belief, compelled language, and inequality of one belief being viewed as 'right' and the other 'wrong'.

Fife again?

Why are we a hotbed for this lunacy?

You cannot discriminate* against PC in employment right from advertising a role, interview, selection, probation and thereafter including promotion.

*There are a few exemptions within the EA where it is a genuine occupational requirement, and you can encourage certain groups to apply if unrepresented but cannot discriminate after that point.

Stupidity is on the increase, if biologically you're a man you should be addressed accordingly

Prisoners get bored. Of course they are going to try and exploit a very low-risk method like claiming an identity, to break that boredom and manipulate custody officers!

Yes. This ^^ The main point frequently made by prison officers.

What are you putting in your water?

Who is the barrister?

Thanks Ickky

Nope the pork (beef) bit been done

An English ET ruled a Muslim kitchen manager with the Police could not be forced to order or manage staff cooking the traditional English breakfast fry-up.
Never seen if it was taken up to a higher court.