Women’s rights activists have asserted that new British trans jail regulations are based on “institutional sexism” and are worse than before.
According to campaigners, the rules make it even simpler for hazardous men to take advantage of the program, according to The Telegraph, who are urging Scottish MSPs to oppose new regulations that were established after a trans rapist was imprisoned.
Criminals who have a history of abusing women and girls will be able to serve their sentences in female prisons under the Scottish Prison Service’s (SPS) plan.
Transgender prisoners who are not deemed to present “an intolerable risk of harm” will be subject to the policy, which is expected to go into effect in February.
Following the controversy surrounding Isla Bryson, a trans rapist who was immediately sent to an all-female prison after being found guilty, the guidance was issued.
After receiving harsh criticism, Bryson, who was formerly known as Adam Graham, was later transferred to a prison’s female wing.
Following a dispute over Bryson’s imprisonment, transgender paedophile Andrew Miller, who also went by the name Amy George, was detained in an adult jail property.
Additionally housed in female cell at British prisons were transgender criminal Alex Stewart, 34, and transsexual assaulter Laura Miller, 30.
The barber, who sexually assaulted and abducted a young girl for 27 hours, filed an appeal for his 20-year prison sentence last month.
It contrasts sharply with England, where laws prohibiting transgender criminals who have not undergone total reassignment surgery from being sent to children’s prisons went into effect in February 2023.
The SPS has succeeded in producing guidelines for managing transgender prisoners that are more ambiguous than the original, according to Lisa Mackenzie of policy analysis group Murray Blackburn Mackinzie (MBM), who spoke with The Telegraph.
The needs of trans identified female prisoners, according to Ms. Mackenzie, have been “quickly dismissed as being less important than concerns about the impact on adult prisoners and sexual jail officers.”
The SPS believes that female prisoners may be subjected to an acceptable amount of damage, she continued. This is institutionalized sexism, little less.
A transgender woman will not be eligible to be considered for admission or transfer to a women’s prison if they have been found guilty of or found to have committed “any offenses that perpetrate violence against the female that results in physical, sexual, or psychological harm or suffering,” according to the SPS Policy for the Management of Transgendered People in Custody (2023).
These crimes include assault or sexual abuse, bullying and intimidation, assault, robbery, abduction, and guilty homicide. They also include commercial sexual exploitation of women.
However, it also states that if a risk management team board determines that “they do not provide an intolerable risk of harm to those in the women’s jail,” such inmates may get transferred to the facility.
All inmates in Scotland’s prison are to be protected, according to the SPS, in terms of their health, health, and wellbeing.
The ten-page report outlines an “individualized approach” that “supports the rights of trans people and the happiness of others in prison, as well as SPS staff.” It states that a transgender people should be taken into custody “on an individual basis as far as achievable” when they are admitted.
However, they will immediately be housed in a facility that corresponds with their sexual assigned at birth if placing them in their chosen accommodation exposes “unacceptable risks that cannot be mitigated or this danger is as still unidentified.”
On February 26, the legislation will go into effect.
According to a Scottish Prison Service spokesman, “Our new plan supports the health, security, and welfare of all people living and working in Scotland’s prisons by taking an individualized method to the entrance, selection, management of transgender people.”
When determining risk, we will properly take into account a variety of factors, including insulting history and violence against women and women in particular. There won’t be any transgender women in the female estate who have a history of abusing women and girls or who put women at risk.
“The scheme has been developed by SPS following considerable engagement, including suggestions from experts in violence against women, several interviews with men and women in prison, trans people and those who are not,” the statement reads.
