Almost 100 transgender prisoners have convictions for sex offences, official figures show.
Some 97 of the 230 inmates – 42 per cent – living under a different gender identity are in jail for sex crimes. They include 44 jailed for rape and 14 who forced under-age children into sexual activity.
Another 11 were convicted of sexual assault and seven for possessing or making child abuse images.
Almost 100 transgender prisoners have convictions for sex offences, official figures show
The statistics, which do not make clear if the inmates are biological males living as women or vice versa, emerged days after the Ministry of Justice revealed a 17 per cent surge in the number of trans prisoners in England and Wales, with at least six held in female jails.
It comes amid a backlash against Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon’s plans to make it easier for Scots as young as 16 to change gender more easily.
Former Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill, who obtained the new breakdown in a Parliamentary answer, last night said: ‘These statistics show that the fears of women’s rights campaigners are right and governments north and south of the border are endangering vulnerable women.
Some 97 of the 230 inmates – 42 per cent – living under a different gender identity are in jail for sex crimes. They include 44 jailed for rape and 14 who forced under-age children into sexual activity
‘To house convicted male sex offenders with them is perverse and damaging to them. It shows the dangers of self-ID and the need to consider placing such prisoners in separate facilities.’
Kate Coleman, of the Keep Prisons Single Sex campaign, said: ‘All evidence indicates that rates of sexual offending in trans women are at least as high as those for other males.’
Justice minister Damian Hinds said: ‘We are not obliged to allocate transgender prisoners according to their wishes, and we are strengthening our policy on transgender prisoners so that transgender women who have committed sexual offences cannot be held in the general women’s estate, subject to an exemption policy for truly exceptional cases.’
