Member-only story
The anti-trans bandwagon has been rolling again with a report in the Daily Mail that as many as 62% of trans women in prison are serving sentences for sexual offences as opposed to 17% of men. The conclusion, which the usual suspects were quick to jump on, was that trans people, and trans women in particular, are perverts, a danger to others, women and girls in particular, and, of course, to be excluded from the much mentioned “single sex spaces”.
Do these figures actually support such a conclusion? I did some research of my won a while ago. The most recent figures I could find were from 2015, which formed part of a parliamentary written answer in 2017. At this point there were 130 prisoners recorded as being transgender. As has been pointed out, for example by BBC Fact Check, the actual number of trans prisoners is probably greater than this, for the reason that information is not collected on prisoners serving short sentences (a year or less) for whom no sentence plan needs to be prepared (they are not in prison long enough for the system to do anything constructive with them). In other words there is collection bias in the data. The only trans prisoners recorded are those serving longer sentences, therefore more likely to included a higher percentage of sex offenders. There is something else. The breakdown of trans prisoners is by legal (and nor acquired gender). A trans prisoner without a Gender Recognition Certificate will be recorded under their birth gender. The data do not therefore allow the number of transwomen in the 130 to be determined.
