FIRST LAGS MOVE IN TO TRANS JAIL

DAILY STAR, Monday, March 4, 2019

BRITAIN is to become home to the first transgender prison in Europe.

It will open as a separate wing within Downview prison near Sutton in south London this week.

Downview is a women’s jail but some of its 320 female prisoners are worried about sharing with cons who are biologically male.

Prison governors and medics admit some male sex offenders claim they are trans to get access to vulnerable women.

The trans “prison within a prison” will be in a separate wing with a fence dividing it from the rest of the complex.

Its first three inmates are due to arrive this week.

Andrea Albutt, president of the Prison Governors Association, said: “They’re going to have to have some kinds of safeguards to make sure a Karen White event doesn’t happen again. That is the number one priority.” Convicted sex abuser White, below left – born Stephen Wood – was on remand for rape when he was sent to a women’s prison claiming he was female.

He sexually assaulted two women prisoners there.

Guidelines now allow the “great majority” of trans prisoners to “experience the system in the gender in which they identify”. Downview’s new trans wing – renamed E Wing – has 15 single cells and one two-bedded cell.

The Ministry of Justice said the prisoners moving there would not have access to other offenders.