Violent male criminals who claim to be “transgender” women will be banned from female prisons from Monday, Britain’s Justice Secretary has claimed.
Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has announced that males incarcerated for committing violent crimes in England and Wales will not be allowed to be housed in women’s prisons, even if they claim to be “transgender”.
Although Raab claims otherwise, the changes to the English prison regime appear to be in response to the controversy in Scotland surrounding “Isla Bryson”, a biological male convicted of two rapes who was sent to a women’s prison after claiming to be transgender.
With the British government having already promised to ban biological males entering women’s prisons if they still have male genitalia or if they have committed a sexual offence, for the most part, Raab has now announced that the ban will extend to all violent transgender criminals.
Writing on Twitter, the Justice Secretary touted the change as being “common-sense”, arguing that it would ” improve safety for prisoners across England and Wales”.
“We are very clear that from next week we will introduce new rules which means that any trans offender with their male genitalia intact or who have been convicted of a sexual offence and, adding to that, if they have been convicted of a violent offence, they will not be allowed into the female prison estate,” he told broadcaster Sky News on Sunday.
Even under this ban, however, dispensations will reportedly be available for some transgender male prisoners who wish to be housed in women’s prisons, with ministers being able to sign off on allowing a male who identifies as a woman to be housed in a facility for biological females should they deem it fit to do so.
Raab was also reportedly keen to emphasise that the changes to the prison system were — despite the timing — supposedly not in response to the infamous Isla Bryson scandal.
Born Adam Graham, Bryson was convicted of raping two women last month while he identified as a man, with his defence even trying to claim that his transition was reason to see him acquitted of the charges.
Once convicted, the original plan was to hold Bryson in a segregated part of a women’s prison, with it even being suggested that he could be moved into the main part of the prison should he be judged as not being a threat to the biologically female prisoners.
Such a suggestion was eventually shot down though after the story gained traction in the British media, with many pundits and members of the public expressing concern that Bryson’s presence could endanger women.
Despite the political backlash though, and the subsequent tightening of prison rules, Raab was keen to emphasise that the Conservative (Tory) Party are actually very much pro-transgenderism.
According to the Justice Secretary, the Tories want to take a “liberal, sensitive, tolerant approach to the LGBT community as a whole and in particular the trans community” — though it is unclear whether this is a position shared by the party’s perennially ignored base of activists and voters.
Raab’s desperation to suck up to advocates of transgenderism is ultimately unsurprising, considering his party’s track record, with the infamous Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) at Tavistock rising to prominence on his party’s watch.
The National Health Service (NHS) outfit is now supposedly being shuttered after a report deemed its medical approach to treating children with gender dysphoria to be putting them at risk — although a report in The Times earlier this month revealed that is in fact still operating and still referring children for trans hormone drugs, despite much sound and fury in the press about it being closed down last year.
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