The rise of the woke prison
by Joanna Williams, spiked:
What’s the difference between a prison and a north London playgroup?
Sadly, this joke comes without a punchline. Training for prison officers now includes therapeutic, woke meditation sessions. Participants sit back, close their eyes and imagine they are walking through a park, greeting friendly faces along the way. Only this is intersectional meditation: the aim is to sniff out wardens with unconscious bias. So if, on this imaginary walk, they see only white men then, well, who knows what awaits? A spot of re-education? Or a spell behind bars?
News of the training sessions, reported in the Telegraph, has provoked the ire of justice secretary Robert Buckland. It’s ‘like the Teletubbies are in charge’, bemoaned one source. Indeed. But why the anger now? Prisons have been woke for some time.
One of the biggest scandals of recent years is the incarceration in women’s prisons of male offenders who – sometimes after sentencing – decide they are actually transgender. Statistics suggest that one in 50 prisoners in the UK (around 1,500 inmates) identifies as transgender, a far higher proportion than within the general population. It is not hard to see why. Transgender prisoners are likely to be able to shower alone and have their own cell – they can also apply to switch between male and female jails. In the woke worldview, this is a compassionate move that respects the identity of transgender prisoners.
However, reports of attacks on women carried out by transgender inmates suggest that the feelings of transgender women are being placed above the safety of female inmates.
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