How could the Lords vote to let trans women into female prisons after this fiasco?

Jan 16, 2022 by Jill

by Mary Harrington, Mail Plus:

SHOULD male criminals ever be incarcerated with women? You might think that this is a mad question, with an obvious answer: of course not.

Or that the appalling crimes committed by Karen White, a 52-year-old male jailed for rape, sexual assault and wounding, then placed in a women’s prison, would make that all too clear.

But to many of our Moral Betters, the answer to the question is: yes. By all means imprison a man with women if, like Karen White, that male criminal identifies as female.

Former Home Office Minister Baron Blencathra has recently tried to stand up to this madness with an amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill. He wants prisoners to be incarcerated according to their sex at birth.

A key principle is at stake here. Baron Blencathra argues that women have a right to some spaces free of men and that prisons ought to be the ‘definitive example’ of such a space.

Yet today, jails are not safe for women.

As Blencathra puts it, when women are jailed, their ‘punishment should not include the threat of rape and violence from big, brute rapists who have decided to identify as women and get sent to a women’s unit’.

He has a point. Blencathra proposed that transgender inmates could be housed in specialist units. You might think this a reasonable compromise. But in November, the House of Lords disagreed – with a majority of their Lordships voting in favour of some males having access to women’s prisons.

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