Over six in ten transgender prisoners in Scotland started to identify as the opposite gender after they were imprisoned, confirming the fears of some that dangerous criminals are using the country’s leftist gender policies to game the criminal justice system.

Freedom of information requests have revealed that as of last month, there were a total of 19 prisoners identifying as transgender in the Scottish Prison System (SPS). Out of these, 12 prisoners (63 per cent) began to claim to be transgender after they were locked up.

According to a report from the UK’s Telegraph newspaper, seven prisoners were classified as “transgender women”, meaning that they were born as biological males, and therefore were allowed to serve their sentences in a female-only prison.

The figures have confirmed in the minds of opponents of allowing bioligcal males into female prisons as proof that criminals are taking advantage of the system by claiming to be transgender and therefore avoid the rigours of the male prison system.

Alba Party MP Kenny MacAskill, who previously served as the locally devolved SNP government’s justice secretary, said: “This is far from reassuring and confirms that self-ID is being used to avoid going to male prisons by male prisoners who have convictions for very serious crimes.”

The revelations come after the Scottish government’s transgender policy drew international backlash — which ultimately forced far-left First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to resign after she was unable to say whether Adam Graham was a woman or not after he began to identify as a woman named Isla Bryson only after being put on trial for raping two women.

Graham, who was later sentenced to eight years in prison, was initially set to serve out his term in a women’s jail despite never receiving a legal gender transition certificate. However, following the intense backlash, the leftist-separatist government decided to backtrack on the decision and send him to a male prison.

The Scottish Prison Service (SPS) also went on to pause the Sturgeon-era policy of allowing prisoners to “self-identify” with the gender of their preference, however, the final policy has yet to be announced and prisoners are still able to be transferred to female prisons following a review process.

Attempting to downplay the figures, the chief executive of the SPS, Teresa Medhurst said that out of the seven biological males placed in female prisons as of last month, only four had actually been convicted of a crime, and that the others were being held on remand during their trial.

“The four sentenced individuals all had an index offence in the non-sexual crimes of violence group. The remanded individuals are alleged to have committed offences in the non-sexual crimes of violence group and the crimes against society group,” she added.

There have long been concerns that dangerous criminals would try to take advantage of woke ideology in prisons. For example, in 2015, the then-President of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists, Dr James Barrett, warned that there is a “plethora of prison intelligence suggesting” that the “driving force” behind biological male sex offenders claiming to be women was to “make subsequent sexual offending very much easier”.

The case of Adam Graham (Isla Bryson) is by far not the first instance of British governments placing dangerous sex offenders in the company of female prisoners because they identified as transgender. In a notable expose, convicted rapist Karen White, born Stephen Wood, sexually assaulted several female prisoners shortly after being transferred to a women’s prison.

Commenting on the issue, Scottish Tory Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) Russell Findlay said: “That the majority of these prisoners decided to transition only after being sent to prison is of obvious suspicion and concern.

“Following the Isla Bryson and Tiffany Scott scandals, the SNP should deliver their transgender prison review as soon as possible.

“A fundamental consideration must be the motivation of those claiming to be transgender and the potential impact on female prisoners, many of whom are vulnerable and have suffered from male violence.”

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka