My Part 3
The issue of prisons seems prevalent, so I'll try to bring some thoughts to this.
There is claim that women have 'hard earned rights' under the Equality Act 2010. Reading the text of that Act suggests that this is myth. Under the heading of Sex, the act recognises only the binary position of men and of women. The Act does not seem to proffer any special privileges to men or women. There are other legal acts of which I am aware in regard to other facilities, but not of prisons.
There is a tradition and history of segregation of men and women in prisons; however for the purposes of the Equality Act the broad approach is the trans men shall be considered to be men and treated as men, and trans women shall be considered to women as treated as women.
In a different place in the act, there is a separate protection for 'gender reassignment'.
Please note there are no protections available for those people who identify as non-binary. However one court case ruled that people who identify as non-binary, though being not transgender should be afforded the same protections as transgender people.
Where ambiguity or exemption is encountered, the role of the court is to attempt to establish what parliament intended. The court will attempt to settle that, where it can not it may refer to the relevant minister which may be for advice or seeking an amendment.
That the court were able to rule on non-binary people shows that they were content that they had understood what parliament intended.
That should be significant to what we can understand, since non-binary people do not undergo transition, do not and can not apply for a gender recognition certificate or change the record of their birth. As you can imagine this adds a layer of complication to the debate about where a person can be housed in the prison estate.
Prisons are divided by sex, and trans people can ask (but not demand) to be housed in the prison estate that best suits them. There is a court ruling on this too, which says that ordinarily trans people should go to a prison of the acquired gender, while not negating other considerations.
So what are the other considerations? Long-standing prison practice, long before this trans debate, was to assess each prisoner by way of a detailed risk assessment carried out by the prison service. We've long had high security prisons, medium risk, open prisons etc.
The risk assessment assess both security and safety. It identifies who is at risk, the prisoner, and other prisoners. Therefore it is perfectly reasonable within a risk assessment to assess whether a prisoner with a trans identity shall be at risk, a risk to other prisoners, or both, and accommodate them accordingly.
That trans prisoners have a default to go to a prison of their choice is a myth.
The outlier.
The most famous outlier is the case of Karen White. White had been tried but not sentenced, she was held on remand. The prison service have the duty to perform a detailed risk assessment. They failed to do so, admitted failure, and apologised. In this case, those with the care of Karen White were private service providers rather than state employees. This was identified as a cause of failure.
The case of Karen White was a political failure.
It is true, that Stonewall have called for the exemption to be removed. The case is arguable one way or the other, but as I have already cautioned, there are absolutists on both sides, exclusionists v inclusionists. If battle continues on that same trajectory, we can not expect an accommodation of views to be found.
My own view is a little complicated and isn't for everyone. I'll not battle any absolutist for the win, so forget trying.
My view is that in the case of sex crimes the treatment of the accused should be contemporaneous with the offence. That is to say that if a person raped a woman while their legal identity was male, they should be treated as male for that purpose and that purpose only, and if legal identity was female they should be treated as female for that purpose, and that purpose only. Further to that, the allocation to the prison estate must be informed by the risk assessment of who becomes vulnerable, but trans prisoners should be allocated to a prison congruent with their acquired gender if that is reasonable practicable. If not - then sorry 'hard cheese'.
Happy to take questions but anyone fancying a battle should look elsewhere.