Transgender attacker ‘can’t be sent to women’s prison’

A VIOLENT transgender criminal was yesterday spared jail over a bottle attack after a judge agreed neither he nor his fellow inmates would be ‘comfortable’ if he were sent to a women’s prison.

Darren Jenner, 18, who is transitioning from being a woman to a man, was hauled to court after failing to attend probation appointments as part of a community order over the attack.

He had been given a two-year order last July for wounding over a ‘bottling’ attack with a requirement to co-operate with anger management and alcohol intervention courses.

Burnley Crown Court heard that Jenner was now ‘complying well’ with the order and the probation service requested that he not be locked up.

Judge Andrew Jefferies, QC, told him: ‘Because of what I am told is the position of you recently complying and the fact that you would go to a female prison, which would not be comfortable for you or somebody else there, on this occasion I am going to do what probation asks.’

More than 100 previously male inmates in jails in England and Wales now identify as female, double the figure two years ago.