Keep violent men out of women’s prisons

sir – In July 2021, the High Court ruled that the Ministry of Justice policies permitting male prisoners who identify as transgender to be housed in women’s prisons are lawful. This includes those convicted of violent and sexual offences and those with male genitalia.

The judgment acknowledged the negative impact on female prisoners and admitted that “many people may think it incongruous and inappropriate that a prisoner of masculine physique and with male genitalia should be accommodated in a female prison”.

Amendment 214 to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, now at the committee stage in the House of Lords, would insert a clause into the Gender Recognition Act 2004 for sex-specific incarceration for violent and sexual offenders.

This will ensure that prisoners with a gender recognition certificate, convicted of violent or sexual offences, are housed in the prison estate of their biological sex. Males convicted of serious violent and sexual offences have obtained gender recognition certificates while in prison and been housed in women’s prisons. No surgery or medical treatment is needed to obtain this certificate.

Existing clauses in the Gender Recognition Act stipulate that a gender recognition certificate entitles the bearer to be treated as a member of the sex with which they identify only for most purposes. In respect of incarceration for violent and sexual offences, unchanged biological sex must take precedence over a gender recognition certificate.

If it is lawful for biologically male prisoners convicted of rape to be housed alongside women, many of whom have been the victims of serious sexual assault, the law must change. Lord Blencathra (Con)

Lord Cormack (Con)

Lord Farmer (Con) Baroness Foster of Oxton (Con) Baroness Fox of Buckley (Nonaffiliated)

Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab) Baroness Meyer (Con)

Lord Morrow (DUP)

London SW1