Custody officer job withdrawn for GC beliefs - Gribbon (SP legal team) is his solicitor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

FROM TT

DH He should arrive at 9.30 and the other two are coming with half an hour apart. I shld be finished by 12.30 tomorrow.
J We're running ahead of schedule. I'd like to press ahead quickly re submissions [missed potential timings - sound is quite muffled]

This afternoons tt tweets

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/2016868474048356383.html

Starts at 10am tomorrow with Mr Weir.

If your belief is that it's wrong to lie, and you don't wish to do it, a) why is that being painted as wrong in a legal setting ffs and b) isn't it akin to chemists who don't believe it's right to sell the morning-after pill so they don't do it?

I'm not saying I agree with that example but isn't it equivalent?

I think DT missed the point that DH was making regarding medical research and instead answered as if he was in an interview. Hopefully the judge will pick up on how reasonable it would be to expect DH to have access to and the ability to decipher proper medical research.

Problem here as I understand it is DT is taking hand off from the Courts too.

Police transport "Jo" to court or "Jo" turned up themselves.

Judge said no bail / prison term is X

If Jo is male he should be transported to a male prison.

If Jo is female she should be tranaported to a female prison.

Dt gets handed the human and paperwork.

If the paperwork is blank DT fills it in and delivers to the correct prison.

If the SPS has someone in the courts filling in the paperwork and arranging transport to a prison place it is an "above pay grade" more "monkey see monkey do" situation

MM You've said yr passionate about this issue and said it's a form of mental illness, a many FtM as sexual

Nope DT said MH not MI

This is sophistry. The individual custody officer (like DT) is going to be 100% sure to which prison his employer and the SPS wants the prisoner transferred and If he or she is not sure, they can ask a superior what the policy is. What a PCO can't do - what's a million miles above a £25k p.a. job - is implement their own individual policy about which prison any prisoner is sent to. If you want chaos in the prison system just let everyone do what accords best with their personal principles and to hell with any kind of uniform policy.

Meanwhile, if GA and SPS ever want DT's personal opinion about whether an individual should be recorded as a man or a woman, I'm sure they'll make that clear when they ask him.

Doing paperwork in the middle of an event

restraining with one hand smackie clipboard and stabby pen in the other.

Well some womenfolkpeople may get bitie fightie....

Win or lose this will hopefully shine more light on the damage being done in our public services.

He MM is reducing down the loss
and that he was not looking to reduce the loss by finding a new job
and imo kinda implying he may be hiding other interviews where he did not picked

"...if a man wanted to call him Susan or Shirley, I would do that.

MM - but surely calling Steven Susan you are treating them as a woman"

I take it that MM is a bit too young to recall the likes of Shirley Crabtree and Marion Morrison.

You have to be rather old to remember them though. Shirley went by the stagename of "Big Daddy" and he was a professional wrestler on TV back in the day.

Marion was better known by his stage name of John Wayne.

I dont understand how the system works

How are CO sure?

Who in the courts makes that order to say if a individual goes to prison A or prison B.

If the CO has a TIF when is sex recorded and how will the CO communicate that the sex is F.

Or is that the Courts job?

Is GA going to say the box M/F is for gender only and the freeform is for pronouns/neopronouns.

I think the devil is in the detail of process and what the M/F box is listed as within GA paperwork

From the PCO's point of view, there's no devil, and there's no detail. If policy is to put people down as M/F according to their own preference, that's the policy. I think the employment tribunal will say it begins and ends there.

Does the policy lead to undesirable outcomes? Probably. It's not the PCO's job to worry about that.

I see that as quite distinct from the use of pronouns in speech, or in written portions of the form. There are creative ways around that. But if it's "tick box A or box B" then you tick whichever box your employer wants you to tick. Because unlike freeform speech or written text, ticking a box isn't in any sense a creative exercise and has nothing to do with your own personal beliefs.

If its not unlawful your contract could have an obligation to lie

NHS policy requires medics to lie to a woman who see she has been placed in a mixed sex ward.

The issue is was it a reasonable request.

The role is to fill out a sheet with data on it
Er said tick what ever box the data subject says is correct as its the TIM data.
So M/F box and freeform box is not a lie.
Ee says data must be true re biological sex

Demanding pronouns is Er controling speech again to what degree is that reasonable

GA make the decision. There is a central office and they get a call from GA PCO in court. The central office then decides where they are placed and sends the paperwork through to the court.

Sorry thats not quite true. The central office is HMPS, they make the decision and instruct GA.

Ha! No that's not true it's Scotland so it's be SPS.

I'll shut up now.

I agree to a point.

It will fall within the data management process.

If the Ee is making Role decisions (not personal) on the basis of the available data (and will have to justify actions and accept blame) then the Ee can not and should not be required to engage in recording false data.

MM has not (yet) proved that the document in question only had a "gender" rather than sex option.

And as this is a key control document used to control the movement of the individual between A B C D A etc GA should be a Fill Out for Dummys slide /document.

Nope that is my point.

How is the data flow set up.
What data is needed and
Who has ownership at each point of the decision making process.

Is that what led to to the TIF being sent to a male prison?

They must have the correct sex on the forms, it is madness not to have accurate records.

I haven't heard a suggestion that a TiF was sent to a male prison because nobody knew she was identifying as something other than her sex.

I agree it's madness not to have accurate records. DT would agree too. But the job being offered to DT wasn't a consultancy position to provide advice to GA or the SPS on how to improve the accuracy of their record keeping.

MM has not (yet) proved that the document in question only had a "gender" rather than sex option

I really hope DH asks the GEO Amey witnesses exactly what data is being captured by the M/F tick boxes and what the reason would be for collecting that data.

I would (and gave) argued that a binary selection of M/F can only be capturing sex and not gender

I really hope DH asks the GEO Amey witnesses exactly what data is being captured by the M/F tick boxes and what the reason would be for collecting that data.

I think that would be trying to litigate a matter that's not open to an Employment Tribunal, and I don't see why it could properly matter to DT as a feature of his employment what the reason for collecting that data is.

MM kept banging on about policy and the law. If the question on the PER is a binary option and relates to sex then DT would not be unreasonable to answer the question honestly. MM was also quoting SOPs regarding the PER and I am sure I heard the words ‘accurate’ and ‘accurately’ in relation to completing the form. I didn’t hear anything to indicate that the M/F question related to ‘affirmed gender’ ( my eyes are rolling out of the back of my head’ ) or instructions in what to tick, only references to pronouns. I might have misheard as MM was getting on my nerves so I did lift was headphones off a few times.