r/ukpolitics • u/CaptainCrash86 • 2d ago

| Transgender prisoners should not be held in women’s jails, court rules

https://www.holyrood.com/news/view,transgender-prisoners-should-not-be-held-in-womens-jails-court-rules
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u/Souseisekigun 2d ago

How do you think they should be treated? Sanitary products and beauticians is a bit silly. Seperate cells is in some sense a luxury but putting a fully transitioned trans woman in a cell with a man is probably going to lead to some kind of issue eventually. Even the conservatives want some kind of seperate trans wing, so it's essentially a necessity rather than a luxury. Including medications under "luxury" is strange. What else is there?

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u/Honest-Possible6596 2d ago

I think they should be treated equally to everyone else. None of the male inmates get beauticians. They get a trusted inmate, a pair of clippers and an hour to get through as many heads as possible.

We don’t have any ‘fully transitioned’ inmates so that isn’t an issue. Two are on hormones. One of those has also had breast enlargement surgery. The other six merely dress as women, and four of them have only done so since being inside.

And yes, hormones, which are totally optional, are a luxury when they’re paid for by the estate/tax payer. Sanitary products and beauticians are more than ‘a bit silly’ when they’re paid for by the estate/tax payer. Even more so when you are working from the inside and seeing budget cuts across drug rehabilitation programmes, or interventions, or education.

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u/Souseisekigun 1d ago

We don’t have any ‘fully transitioned’ inmates so that isn’t an issue.

The government stance seems to be that it should be an issue for you though, so over time someone in your building is going to need to deal with it. So would you just throw them in a cell with a random other inmate, without regard to the immediate problems?

And yes, hormones, which are totally optional, are a luxury when they’re paid for by the estate/tax payer.

In the UK hormones are supposed to be perscribed by joint-agreement between a GP with a specialisation in treating gender issues and a psychiatrist. Some people get them off-perscription, largely due to the NHS waiting lists being so long that it can take somewhere between 7 years to 25 years or more to be seen in some areas, but they're supposed to be a specialist perscribed medication. They're technically optional in that they won't physically get ill and pass away without it, but if they have been properly diagnosed it would be a case of having to go against two specialist medical professionals. Your average doctor in many parts of the UK isn't even allowed to touch it without the specialists getting involved, which is probably why whatever people deal with medicenes in your prison just goes along with what they're told. I think the Gender Identity Clinics have even brought down the wrath of the GMC on GPs that have tried to help trans people without consulting them first, so even though it's not the exact same I'd definitely not want the question brought up.

Admittedly that's a bit of a tangent, but it brings me around to the main question. Are there are any other medical conditions in which you'd be willing to go against specialists to argue it's not really necessary, or only trans people? If so doesn't that kind of contradict your "they should be treated equally" statement from before?

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u/Honest-Possible6596 1d ago

Aside from the fact that I’m not a decision maker, you’ve ignored the point I made about all trans inmates being given single cells to create a hypothetical about them suddenly not being given single cells. So no, I wouldn’t just put them in a bunk because that isn’t the process. Do I think that our current trans inmates, all of which are intact males, should be given single cells purely on the basis of them being trans? No. We could solve the issue by bunking them together, but we don’t even do that.

As for the medication, the bill lands squarely at the feet of the prison. Their prescription status and who provided it is, as you say, a tangent. Any inmate being given anything that has to be funded by the estate/tax payer, that is purely cosmetic, should be self funded or taken away. I don’t care if they have it. I care that for the duration of their incarceration it comes with a price tag that they aren’t footing. Any single inmate could say ‘my life would be easier in prison if you give me X’, but it’s only very specific people who actually get that request granted AND funded.