There’s a growing trend in Great Britain: prisoners in jail deciding that they are transgender.
As christian.org.uk reports, “One in 50 male offenders in prisons say they are transgender, according to a survey by the Inspectorate of Prisons.” The Chief Inspector of Prisons, Peter Clarke, said there could be as many as 1,500 prisoners claiming they are transgender in England and Wales, at least ten times the previous estimate. He commented, “Sometimes we find the numbers of people identifying as transgender are higher in our survey than the prison will think.” Chair of the Prison Officers Association Mark Fairhurst speculated there “would always be some trying to abuse the system.”
There are definite advantages to claiming you are transgender if you are in a British prison; separate showers, single cells, and the choice of whether you’d like to be incarcerated in a male or female prison.
The Telegraph noted, “The watchdog’s survey of 5,133 British prisoners found two per cent self identified as transgender or transexual, rising to 10 per cent of the 287 traveller offenders surveyed. Extrapolated across the prison service, this would mean about 1,500.”
In October 2018, a convicted pedophile who declared he was a woman once he was in prison, then was jailed with other women, was sentenced to life by a British judge after the pedophile had attacked two women at the women’s prison.
Stephen Terence Wood, 52, who called himself Karen White and had been called a “predatory and controlling” rapist, had already been convicted of indecent assault, indecent exposure and gross indecency involving children, animal cruelty and dishonesty, according to The Guardian.
The British Ministry of Justice apologized for transferring White to the female prison; the Ministry acknowledged it had not considered White’s previous history before moving him.
Judge Christopher Batty told White, “You are a predator and highly manipulative and in my view you are a danger. You represent a significant risk of serious harm to children, to women and to the general public.”
At a transgender event in Hyde Park, London, in September 2017, two people were suspected by police of punching a 60-year-old woman in the face. There was only one problem: police wouldn’t say what gender the suspects were because they were afraid they might get it wrong. Scotland Yard said it was “a gray area” and dependent on which gender the suspects claimed to be. A spokeswoman for Scotland Yard, who acknowledged the suspects might be transgendered individuals, said, “We have to be very careful. We are not going to commit ourselves to something because I’m afraid it’s not black and white.”