Below are testimonies from several women prisoners expressing a range of views on the accommodation of male transgender prisoners in the female prison estate. These women have been living with the consequences of current prison policy, which includes the housing of male sex offenders in women’s prisons, day-to-day. This is their lived reality, and we believe it is absolutely vital that their voices are heard.

Background

In July 2021, the High Court ruled that the Ministry of Justice “Care and Management Policy”, which allows for the placing of male transgender sex offenders in women’s prisons, was lawful.

The judges accepted that female prisoners were being asked to give up some of their rights to accommodate males being housed alongside them.

For example, they accepted that the introduction of male prisoners into women’s prisons carries “a statistically greater risk of sexual assault” upon women than not doing so.

Furthermore, they acknowledged that placing males in women’s prisons risked discriminating against female prisoners, and this was true regardless of whether an assault occurred. Their very presence could be enough.

They accepted that female prisoners are a vulnerable cohort, amongst whom past experience of sexual abuse or rape is prevalent, and that they could “suffer fear and acute anxiety” at the mere presence of male prisoners in their spaces. It was not transphobic for female prisoners to feel that way.

However, the judges said that the prisons policy should not be based solely on the concerns of women prisoners. The judges felt that it was “impermissible” to ignore “the rights of transgender women to live in their chosen gender” in developing the policy.

The judges also said they were being asked to rule on “the lawfulness, not the desirability, of the policies”. The undermining of female prisoners’ rights in favour of a small sub-section of male prisoners is, the judges concluded, currently lawful.

Data collected across the prison estate in March/April 2019 recorded that there were 163 transgender prisoners of whom 81 had been convicted of one or more sexual offences. Of those 81 sex offenders, 74 were housed in the male prison estate and 7 in the female prison estate.