New MoJ transgender prisoner policy: WPUK Statement

New MoJ transgender prisoner policy: WPUK Statement

Woman’s Place UK welcomes the Ministry of Justice’s announcement that transgender women offenders will no longer be housed in women’s prisons if they have male genitalia or have committed sexual or violent crimes. We believe, however, that it does not go far enough.

This decision demonstrates that the insistence, in some quarters, that the law always entitles men who self-identify as female to have access to women’s single-sex spaces, is mistaken. It does no such thing.

Furthermore, we urge Dominic Raab to recognise that it is not only male prisoners, but male staff in the women’s estate, who pose a safeguarding risk to vulnerable women. In 2011, for example, the acting governor of Downview women’s prison, Russell Thorne, was sentenced to five years in prison for grooming and sexually exploiting female inmates.

For several years, the prison service in England and Wales has operated a policy of allocating transgender prisoners to the men’s or women’s estate on a case-by-case basis – even though the Equality Act has provisions to allow single-sex spaces for women to exclude male transgender prisoners. Data collected in 2019 show that there were 129 transgender prisoners in the male estate and 34 in the female estate.

This policy has been harmful to female prisoners, who have been trapped in a confined space with male offenders, compromising their privacy, dignity and safety. The practice clearly breaches the Prison Rules 1999:

Women prisoners shall normally be kept separate from male prisoners.

It also breaches the United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners:

Men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women, the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate.

For several years, numerous organisations and individuals have fought against this cruel and inhumane policy. Fair Play for Women sourced and published figures on transgender prisoners; the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies; Keep Prisons Single Sex; and our own organisation, WPUK. They have stepped in where penal reform organisations have failed to. Criminologist, Professor Jo Phoenix, continues her valuable work highlighting the harms done to female prisoners by allowing men in the women’s estate. Particular credit should go to FDJ, an anonymous woman, who, having been sexually assaulted by a male prisoner in a women’s prison, challenged the MoJ’s policy in court.

We note with disappointment, however, that some organisations dedicated to penal reform have had little to say on this matter. The policy of allowing men to be housed in women’s prisons is a particularly striking example of how the needs of women in prison are often overlooked.

More than half of female prisoners (57%) are victims of domestic violence, while 53% report having experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse as a child. Placing women in prison often breaks up families, leaving their children in the care of others. Yet the majority are in prison for minor offences, with only 3.2% considered a high risk to others. The casual neglect of women’s safety by housing them alongside men is of a piece with a longstanding unwillingness to reform the justice system’s treatment of women convicted of crime.

Although we are pleased that the Ministry of Justice has finally responded to the longstanding concerns
expressed by women’s organisations, we do not believe that the new policy goes far enough. There should be no place at all for men in women’s prisons, regardless of whether they have convictions for violent or sexual offences, and regardless of whether they retain male genitalia. The very low conviction rates for rape and sexual offences demonstrate that a male prisoner who does not have a conviction for a sexual or violent offence cannot automatically be assumed to be safe. We also believe that it is essential to use clear and accurate terminology when discussing this issue, and we urge the MoJ to reconsider its use of language when referring to trans prisoners. It has inaccurately, and confusingly, used the term ‘transgender female offenders’ in its announcement to refer to transgender male prisoners.

Judith Green, co-founder WPUK

In 2021, we co-hosted a public meeting, A Woman’s Place Is Not In Prison, #WPUKprisons with the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies to highlight the problems facing women in prison. It is time that the needs of women in the criminal justice system become a political priority. As outlined in our manifesto, we would like to see the government implement the recommendations of both the Corston Report and the Angiolini Report.

We believe no female prisoner should be forced to share prison space with male prisoners. The United Nations mandate to keep male and female prisoners separate is essential, not just for the safety of female prisoners, but for their privacy and dignity. We call on the MoJ to implement a women-only policy in women’s prisons, as a first step in a wholesale reform of the way the criminal justice system treats women convicted of crime.

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