The refusal to move a pre-operative transsexual prisoner from a men's jail to a women's prison is a violation of her human rights, says the High Court.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/8237886.stm
What puzzles me most about the Prison Service's attitude is this:
She is serving a life sentence for manslaughter and attempted rape, committed when a man.
Her gender dysphoria and appearance had seriously affected her ability to engage in "offending behaviour" work and make progress towards her release on licence, he added.
[The Prison Service and the Ministry of Justice] argued that transfer might have a serious impact on her mental health, making it more difficult for her to reduce her level of risk to society and win early release.
Given she's currently in a men's prison, I'm not entirely surprised she's having problems with rehabilitation schemes (which presumably involve contact with other prisoners)...
Comments
Transfer
They are saying that transferring "A" to a female prison would inhibit her mental development? What on earth could she benefit from staying in a male prison? Seems like some people need to learn more about the gender problems. Of course I'm on postulating as I don't have near enough info on "A" to make any valid judgments.
Huggles,
Winnie
Huggles,
Winnie
As she's pre-op
and her male equipment might still work I would have a hard time introducing her to the female prison population given the crime for which she was incarcerated. Nor would the female prisoners likely take kindly to her.
Commentator
Visit my Caption Blog: Dawn's Girly Site
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This individual
has killed one person and tried to rape a female. I'm not sure I'd have considered them suitable material for reassignment at any point. As for granting them female status - it makes a mockery of those of us who have gone through the system and live as females. This person is dangerous, cutting the balls of him/her ain't gonna make them less violent, cutting his head off will.
Angharad
Angharad
Hear hear.
I've always been a bit bloodthirsty toward rapists and murderers, although in this particular case, the murderee seems to have been a man, with whom the prisoner appears to have had an intimate relationship involving brawling, so he got off with manslaughter, whilst the woman who was menaced with attempted rape at least escaped with her life more or less intact. This is one sick puppy.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
I've been wrestling with this one all day too...
One of the less edifying spectacles I've seen since before I transitioned is how readily some transpeople will aggressively deny the gender of other transpeople if for whatever reason they don't like them. I've caught myself doing it. It's a particularly low form of bitchiness that's all ours. (Okay, other people do it too, but we ought to know better.)
The fact is, we are represented across all sectors of society. But we are rare, and criminality, especially violent criminality, is surprisingly rare too, given the media hysteria about it - which would make violently criminal transsexuals very rare indeed. So rare, in fact, that it might be tempting to believe they can't exist. After all, historically, we've been much more familiar with the role of the victim of violent and sexual crimes. For one to be the perpetrator feels like an affront, and a betrayal. Hence such extreme reactions.
We, frankly, do not know "this individual" through anything other than some rather excitable media reports for whom this is only interesting enough to report because a transsexual is involved. We cannot possibly judge the merits of her gender identity; we don't have the information and frankly we don't have the right, particularly as our "judgement" is so strongly informed by those feelings of affront and betrayal.
So I'm going to take the reports at face value: Someone who has killed and raped is a transsexual. Get used to it; there's nothing in nature that says those two conditions can't both be true. As Prospero said, "this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine".
I live in fear of when a transsexual paedophile hits the news. It's going to kill us. There's enough people out there who want to believe it anyway; frankly they don't need to have their prejudices confirmed. But, again, what is there in nature that would make such a creature impossible?
On a related note, there's a certain cohort of people who always go on about how convicted rapists (and paedophiles for that matter) (male ones anyway) should be castrated. Some go on about it being an aid to rehabilitation; many others, perhaps more honestly, really don't care about that because they just see it as something the perpetrators "deserve". In our culture and history castration has almost always been a punitive act.
Well, here's a test-case for them: someone who's already being chemically castrated, and will get the job done properly if she gets her way. Will it make her "safer"? Even if it does could you tell it apart from the psychological uplift she'll get from a full transition, which argument formed the basis of this case?
(Leaving aside the ethics of doing it to non-transsexuals, I think the scientific view is, it can help in rehabilitation if the original crimes really were in part down to excess testosterone. But that's not always true; it's probably not even often true, especially when it comes to women who are murderers and abusers...)
It Seems Strange
It seems strange to me, how "A" could do that to a woman if they felt like a woman themselves. You have to wonder if the prisoner is pulling a con on prison officials? It is a known fact that inmates who rape or murder women and children are "marked" by other inmates and very often don't live long unless kept in solitary confinement. They may be pulling this to get out of that environment. Putting a rapist in a women's prison is like letting a fox loose in a hen house full of chickens. The true motives of "A" need to be seriously explored.
This is the type of person
This is the type of person who gives the TG/TS community a bad name. His/her previous actions and reasons for being in prison are the stuff that those opposed to any TS/TG issues use as their ammunition to claim we are simply perverted in our thinking. What I can see happening is this person, after being transfered to a female prison facility, will be placed into an administrative segregation cell, for her safety and the safety of the other women there. I do not foresee any of the women at the new facility really wanting to be around her, and not just because of the TG/TS issue. Janice Lynn
that is nothing.
In Texas they had a post op at a male unit. She had to live in segregation. 23 hrs a day in a cell.
Love,
Paula
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune
Paula
Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.
The Coda
Chapterhouse: Dune
I'm confused...
Take this paragraph:
That seems to imply that the prisoner was first sentenced in 2001, was released 5 years later (2006), then attempted to rape a female stranger 3 days afterwards. The article claims that the GRA certification also came through in 2006, so evidently although the prisoner had transitioned, s/he was still violent and unstable when released. Which also brings into question the decision to release the prisoner after the minimum term - what made the original parole board think s/he was no longer a risk?
Presumably after the attempted rape the prisoner was quickly escorted back into jail (a male jail, which suggests that the attempted rape happened before GRA certification), but...
Hang on, despite being on a life sentence, would ordinarily have been eligible for parole only one year after being reimprisoned? That seems an awfully short time...
--Ben
As the right side of the brain controls the left side of the body, then only left-handers are in their right mind!
Sentencing and parole
This is the UK Home Office we're talking about here. This is probably the most dysfunctional department of government we have had for a long while (well, perhaps the Treasury is competing for the position). It's not really surprising s/he's been in and out of the nick so often, especially when the prison poulation is so high at the moment and the powers that be are trying to make some room.
I would also like to bet that the various officials attempting to figure out what to do with her/him have little experience of TG matters and are probably more interested in spending as little money as possible than trying to do the right thing here.
Having said that, given that we don't know the actual circumstances of any of the crimes, I would personally have difficulty figuring out how to treat this person.
Penny
I feel the need to point out
I feel the need to point out several important and subtle facts.
1) She was convicted of manslaughter. This doesn't make her a murderer. The article expressly says under "provocation of her male partner." This could mean any number of things including her lover raping her, beating her, or abusing her in other ways. I feel it incredibly unreasonable to judge her on the manslaughter conviction especially since we do not know the solid facts surrounding it.
2) She was than convicted of *attempted* rape. She did *not* actually manage to rape anyone. Is that not what that means? For all we know she went to rape this woman (due to any number of psychological reasons) realized it was wrong and stopped herself. Or she could easily have intended to follow through with the rape but some other force intervened, maybe another person caught her in the act, or perhaps she wasn't physically strong enough.
So, what we know is: She is not a murderer and she is not a rapist. She has killed and she has attempted to rape but she has not hit the full extreme of either situation. Don't get me wrong here. I *do* believe that rape is disgusting, but we know so very little of the situation that I don't believe it is the right of any of us to judge. People tend to automatically go towards the more negative aspect of any situation (i.e. manslaughter becomes murder, attempted rape is rapist/pedophile, etc. etc.) but I think you need too look at the heart of the issue concerning her rights.
What rights? Right now she is being locked up in a cell as if she was some sort of serial killer, a rabid pedophile, or a combination of the two. What she did was wrong... but should she be punished *that* badly? Should psychological torture be used? Should she have little to no contact with anyone, ever? Should she really never be allowed out of her cell?
I think these are the issues that need to be focused on, not the speculation of the barely touched on events surrounding her present incarceration.
"by reason of provocation of her male partner"
has the full meaning, "According to the report of the only survivor, it was all his fault." Further exploration reveals that the police, and eventually the courts, found something "fishy" about the story, so the killing did *not* devolve into "self defence."
Murder is a separate crime in law, and has a heavy burden of proof (except in certain regions and times within the USA, where the colour of one's skin is/was a likely indicator of guilt).
But the root of the word is the same "mor" we find in "mortal" or "rigour mortis," and means simply "death." Its basic meaning is "killing of a human being."
The old Vikings were a rough and ready bunch who made a distinction between "morthor" a secret killing, at night, or especially when the victim was asleep, and "vig," killing in a fair fight, from whence Anglo-Saxon original notion we derive our "man-slaughter" laws, since the man-slaughterer was still liable for wer-gild, a monetary fine paid to the victim's family, or vengeance, in which the killer might have to engage in "fair fights" with as many prople who wanted to kill him to avenge their relative's death.
Cheers,
Puddin'
-
Cheers,
Puddin'
A tender heart is an asset to an editor: it helps us be ruthless in a tactful way.
--- The Chicago Manual of Style
In today's Guardian
it suggests that both crimes were manifestations of her problems with her gender situation. (The killing was by strangulation - unlikely to be self defence, is it?) Sorry, but that is making excuses. If someone is that disturbed, I would be very wary of accepting them at a gender identity clinic.
I also find it an irritant that I was nearly twenty years living as female and post op and the Gender Recognition Panel pissed me about over documentation - my doctor hadn't worded it just right. And 'A' who hasn't lived in the real world, gets recognition for being in a male prison. Sorry they don't lock you up these days for being TS, they do it for being violent and dangerous - for which there are no excuses.
Angharad
Angharad
Jack Straw
>> What puzzles me most about the Prison Service's attitude is this:
As I understand it, the Prison Service believed that "A" was in more danger in a women's prison and would be safer and better socialised where "A" was.
This makes sense to me. It seems a fair argument as well. They also mentioned that they thought that for reasons of safety "A" would wind up in 23-hour isolation, which is inimical to mental health.
The Parole Board warned as well that he still poses a risk of sex offending, which hardly seems fair to the women in prison, whose neighbours in the cells, for all their faults, are fairly unlikely to rape them.
Women take a dim view of rapists and thugs, even if the rapist was foiled in his intentions for some reason. Quite a number of women in prison are violent. That's quite often how they came to be there. So I can see why Mr Straw thinks "A" might be in danger.
>> The prisoner was jailed for manslaughter in 2001 after he admitted strangling his boyfriend with a pair of tights after the older man refused to pay for a private sex-change operation.
I'm sure that this was terribly provoking to "A," that delicate flower, but hardly justifies a charge less than murder, in my distinctly non-legal opinion.
I myself have been made quite cross when passers-by on the street have failed to give me a Maserati, which I richly deserve after all I've suffered, but never once felt like strangling any of them. But now that I see that it's only five years a pop, I've got a little list, they never will be missed. And they're very irritating, each and every one.
>> He was given a five-year jail term but was released on licence in late 2002. Five days later he attempted to rape a female shop assistant in Manchester when he was living in a women's bail hostel.
So we've already seen how "A" has behaved around women in the past, so what's next? Did the bad shop assistant "provoke" poor "A"? Perhaps through not "putting out," which is simply awful behaviour, and terribly impolite, isn't it? Doesn't "A" deserve sex after all that time in prison?
Cheers,
Liobhan
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Cheers,
Liobhan