Could the extraordinary scandal of transgender sex offenders being sent to women’s prisons come at any worse a time for Nicola Sturgeon? Only days after her flagship Gender Recognition Reform (GRR) Bill was stalled by Westminster’s government on the grounds that it might have an ‘adverse impact’ on women’s safety, it emerged that women have already been endangered by the Scottish Prison Service (SPS). In their anticipation of this very legislation, Scottish prisons have been allowing male sex offenders to routinely self-identify as women for almost a decade.
How was this allowed to happen? How did the First Minister not know until last week that rapists, such as Isla Bryson (formerly Adam Graham), were being housed in women’s prisons? How could it have been that a sex offender was caged in with female prisoners, ‘like a fox in a henhouse’, as the dissident SNP MSP Kenneth Graham aptly put it? The questions keep coming.
Following the initial media storm, the First Minister announced last Thursday that rapists would not, in future, be sent to women’s prisons (despite this precedent already being set under her government). Yet the following day she insisted that there would be no ‘blanket ban’ on trans sex offenders.
But that was before the next scandal emerged. It turns out another violent criminal, Tiffany Scott (formerly Andrew Burns), had been approved for incarceration in Cornton Vale. And before that, yet another male-bodied transwoman had already been there, despite having pled guilty to assaulting inmates: all six-foot-five of Katie Dolatowski, a convicted paedophile.
Sturgeon’s words had to be updated in light of the fresh revelations. On Sunday, only days later, Justice Secretary, Keith Brown, issued another edict banning the transfer to women’s jails of any trans criminals with a history of violence against women. But with this announcement came more contradictions: only days before, Brown had said this was a matter solely for the prison service. And furthermore it raised the very important question of why any violent male-bodied trans offenders were being sent to women’s prisons.
And what of the mantra, uttered by SNP politicians over the last three years, that ‘transwomen are women’? Clearly they are not if they are being sent to male jails.
What of the mantra, uttered by SNP politicians over the last three years, that ‘transwomen are women’? Clearly they are not if they are being sent to male jails.
This muddle has had disastrous consequences, not least for the marginalised group everyone has forgotten in the feeding frenzy: transgender people themselves. They have now been indelibly linked in the public mind with sex criminals and ‘trans rapists’. Of course the vast majority are not – and they should live their lives as they wish, free from tabloid demonisation.
But the First Minister can hardly blame the press for sensationalism here: this is a genuine scandal. Ministers repeatedly assured voters that this kind of thing didn’t happen. Even more unbelievably, Sturgeon had actually rejected an amendment to the GRR Bill that would have prevented convicted sex offenders from changing sex and entering women’s prisons. The claims that self-ID could be exploited were ‘not valid’, she said. Former Lord Chancellor, Charlie Falconer, also scoffed at the idea.
In deciding whether to back down or double down, Sturgeon has opted – unsurprisingly – for the latter. She has previously called the critics of her policies, feminists concerned about women’s safety like the Scottish author JK Rowling, ‘transphobic… deeply misogynistic, often homophobic and possibly racist’.
In 2014, the SPS published its gender identity policy which works to ensure that the prison accommodation chosen ‘should reflect the gender in which the person in custody is currently living’. The guidance to prison officers was unambiguous: ‘People in custody should be rubbed down and body-searched in accordance with the social gender in which they are living, rather than according to their physical body’. Stonewall and the Trans Alliance had convinced the SPS that this would pave the way for self-declaration across all public services. The reality is that Nicola Sturgeon stood by as the prison service was installing transgender prisoners in the female estate, and had been doing so for nearly 10 years. Scottish prisons have been applying the policy of self-ID before the legislation had ever appeared in parliament.
Yesterday, Sturgeon suggested that the temporary ban on trans sex offenders was to become permanent. And given all that has emerged in recent weeks, it seems unlikely that any transwoman will be placed in women’s prisons in future. The political risk of there being an assault, sexual or otherwise, is just too great.
But the problems with the GRR Bill remain. If transwomen secure gender recognition certificates after three months under the government’s forthcoming legislation, they will be legally female. According to Rhona Hotchkiss, a former governor of Cornton Vale, this means transgender prisoners like Bryson might be able to then challenge the decision to move her/him to a male prison. No doubt one of the many conspicuous supporters of self-ID will be offering their services.
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