Last Updated on February 18, 2020
A UK Member of Parliament has suggested that transgender inmates should be free to serve their prison sentences in a prison according to their gender identity.
Wigan Labour MP, Ms Lisa Nandy, has rekindled a contentious debate dividing the Labour Party on the subject of trans rights.
Nandy, according to The Daily Mail, suggested that violent criminals, including child rapists, should serve their prison sentence in a prison facility according to their gender identity.
Making the controversial announcement at a party rally, where she was asked whether male offenders guilty of violent crimes who transition should be able to serve their time at a prison catering for their gender identity, she said the following;
“I believe fundamentally in people’s right to self-ID.
“I believe the Gender Recognition Act strikes the wrong balance in relation to that.
“I think that crimes that are recorded should be recorded as that person wishes, having gone through that process, received support and self-identified.
“I think trans women are women, I think trans men are men, so I think they should be accommodated in a prison of their choosing.”
The question was asked by a critic who referred to a case where a man convicted of five counts of child rape transitioned behind bars.
One particular area of the debate concerns the protection of vulnerable women and the inclusion of trans women within these spaces, such as prisons and shelters.
In recent years, controversial stories where trans women, accused of certain crimes, such as rape, have been shuttled to women’s prisons, to catastrophic effect. In 2018, a trans woman, serving a sentence at a women’s prison, was accused of sexually assaulting some of the female inmates at the prison facility.
National File has reported on a few cases relating to inmates who have transitioned behind bars–often on the taxpayer’s dime.
Last year, it was revealed that the taxpayer would foot the bill for a transgender woman, who raped and murdered a young family while identifying as male, to commence his gender transition while incarcerated.
A convicted pedophile, who was believed to have abused up to 15 minors, will be granted an early release from an Iowa prison as his gender transition lowered his testosterone levels by such a significant amount, he was deemed to pose minimal risk of reoffending.
In Idaho, a convicted pedophile’s case was set to go to a federal judge in order to secure taxpayer funds to begin a gender transition.
