Female prisoners in Scottish jails have told how transgender inmates serving sentences alongside them switched back to their male birth gender after being released.
The disclosure — in a study published in the British Journal of Criminology — has raised fresh concerns about self-identification of gender posing a risk to women’s safety as first minister Nicola Sturgeon prepares to press ahead with gender recognition legislation this year.
In England and Wales there have been a small number of incidents of violence and sexual violence involving female prisoners being attacked by trans prisoners.
The study by Dr Matthew Maycock of Dundee University’s school of education and social work turned up no such disturbing behaviour in Scotland, with only some discomfort about very limited consensual sexual activity.
