Women's prisons and the Gender Recognition Act (2015)

So the question is where should transwomen convicted of a crime be imprisoned? Male or female sections? I don't honestly think it's reasonable to expect the country to set up a third category of prisons.

You'd think, but that's not what's been happening. Even with a prisoner like "Barbie Kardashian" who is so violent to women that there were constant threats to rape and murder various women, including BK's own mother.

What I'm wondering is, while the SC judgment in the UK seems to have clarified the recent confusoin between sex and gender, whether the GRA in Ireland will make it difficult to do the same in Ireland, at least for those TW with gender recognition certs.

And of course the GRA has no falsifiable test for someone being trans - it's based on self declaration. So anyone could get one if they want to be in a female prison.

I don't know what the situation is today, (do you have a link to that?) but that certainly has not always been the case. There were three violent transwomen in the female estate in Limerick prison at the same time not that long ago. Paddy O'Gorman interviewed women coming out of the prison, who said that they had been terrified by the three who, even when locked in their cells, roared and shouted threats at any woman going past.

They also took up room in an already very overcrowded female section, and posed organisational problems of how to keep the women safe.

If you're right that this can no longer happen, that's great. Who decided on this change, when and why? I mean, is it permanent?

I'd really like some evidence of it, as I haven't seen any.

Personally I think it would be better if prison officers in a female prison were mostly female, as there probably is some risk of inappropriate relationships, including women being either incited or forced to have a relationship with a prison guard. Same for having male prison guards in male prisons, for that matter.

But I agree that it's not at all the same thing: prison employees are not only not criminals, they are actively vetted before getting a job there.

That only says that one transwoman is being held in the male estate, in connection with inspections of the conditions in which women are being held in prison. They inspected the male section because one TW was there.

Ireland’s statutory prison watchdog, the Office of the Inspector of Prisons (OIP), has just completed an unannounced general inspection of Limerick Women’s Prison. Inspectors also visited unit D1 in Limerick Prison for Men, which is currently holding a transgender woman. 

It doesn't say that no transwomen are in the female estate, since no special inspection would be required for that.

Perhaps.

Found not guilty despite threatening to rape her so violently that she would be unable to have children.

I don't know that there is only one, although I assume you mean Barbie Kardashian, who is probably one of the most dangerous prisoners in Ireland, male or female.

The question is though, why was Kardashian ever put in the women's estate in the first place, and what is the policy for "normally" dangerous transidentifying male prisoners in the future who wish to be imprisoned in the female estate?

I never claimed that the women were in physical danger from the TW prisoners - I said they should not have to put up with being verbally abused by males shouting sexual comments at them as part of their prison experience, and nor should their conditions be made worse by having cells kept aside for those TW in an already heavily overcrowded section.

Mens prisons are also over crowded.

Well yes, but that isn't the female prisoners' responsibilty to solve is it? If their conditions are adversely affected by having male-bodied prisoners put in with them, why should they have to step up and make things better for the prisoners in the male estate?

And of course the women's conditions will be more badly affected by having transwomen in with them than the male prisoners would be, because of always having to keep the women separate in order to keep them safe from the transidentifying males.

Why do you call them trans identifying men?

Because I think it's important to be clear what you're saying and I've noticed that a lot of people who aren't already aware of this issue find it confusing. They hear 'trans woman' and they think you mean a biological woman who wishes to live like a man. In which case, saying that such a person should be put in a male prison would be a very different thing to saying that someone like Barbie Kardashian should be in a male prison.

Well it's certainly what Isla Bryson did in Scotland.

Isla Bryson from Clydebank, Scotland is a transgender woman who, prior to transitioning, raped two women in 2016 and 2019, being convicted of those offences in 2023. Bryson was charged, and first appeared in court in 2019, under the name Adam Graham. Shortly thereafter, in 2020, Bryson came out as trans and took the name Isla Bryson.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isla_Bryson_case

So does that mean you think a trans man who's convicted of a crime should be put in a male prison regardless of what the person wants themselves?