Male-Bodied Rapists Are Being Imprisoned With Women. Why Do so Few People Care?
In 2015, the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists (BAGIS) submitted a written brief to the Transgender Equality Inquiry, which had been undertaken by the UK Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee, explaining why it was “naïve to suggest that “nobody would seek to pretend transsexual status in prison if this were not actually the case.”
“There are, to those of us who actually interview the prisoners, in fact very many reasons why people might pretend this,” wrote Dr. James Barrett, the President of BAGIS. “These vary from the opportunity to have trips out of prison through to a desire for a transfer to the female estate (to the same prison as a co-defendant) through to the idea that a parole board will perceive somebody who is female as being less dangerous through to a [false] belief that hormone treatment will actually render one less dangerous through to wanting a special or protected status within the prison system and even (in one very well evidenced case that a highly concerned Prison Governor brought particularly to my attention) a plethora of prison intelligence information suggesting that the driving force was a desire to make subsequent sexual offending very much easier, females being generally perceived as low risk in this regard.”
The idea that many male offenders would opt to serve their sentences in women’s correctional facilities is not something that should shock a thinking person. But it appears that common sense is forgotten once the words “gender identity” are invoked. Male offenders, including violent offenders and sex offenders, currently are incarcerated in women’s prisons in various western jurisdictions. This policy has been adopted in numerous countries under the guise of tolerance. Recently, Ireland had its first transfer, when a fully intact male sex offender was placed in a women’s prison in Limerick. The California Senate also recently voted in favour of such accommodations. This policy often is referred to as “self ID.” It means that your status as a male or female is determined by your belief (or claim) about your sex and not by your actual biology.
This is happening in Canada, where I live, even if most Canadians have no idea about it. The people who live in prison, including female prisoners, have very little constituency among politicians or journalists. The media reports on this issue rarely. And when they do, there is miniscule, if any, acknowledgement that self-ID poses a serious danger to incarcerated women. Just the opposite: Self-ID is portrayed as a step toward progressive enlightenment, full stop.
When these men do abuse female inmates, it is referred to, for official purposes, as “female” perpetrated violence, since that is how the perpetrator is classified. I learned about this policy, and the lobby effort behind it, from British radical feminists on Twitter, because, as noted above, the Canadian media either isn’t interested in reporting on it, or is fearful that candid reporting in this area will lead to accusations of transphobia.
The activism of these British women brought the case of Karen White to my attention. White is a male rapist who was admitted into a women’s prison in Wakefield, England in 2017. White has been convicted of sexually assaulting two female inmates during his three months of incarceration in Wakefield. He was subsequently sent to a male prison.
Hearing about the UK’s policy of self-ID for prisons prompted me to check if there was a similar policy in Canada. I assumed that this was not the case, as I had not heard anything of it. And the very thought of it ran counter to my conception of Canadian values, which tend to be highly protective of women’s rights and safety. It turned out I could not have been more wrong: On both the provincial and federal levels, male-bodied offenders have been housed in women’s prisons on the basis of self-ID for quite some time.
On the federal level, this began in 2017, after the passage of Bill C-16, which added gender identity and expression to the Criminal Code and the Human Rights Act. Prior to this, only men who’d had sexual reassignment surgery (SRS) could be considered for accommodation in a women’s federal prison. Now, the policy was basically anything-goes.
Sex offenders such as Patrick Pearsall and Matthew Harks have been housed in Canadian women’s prisons. As has contract killer Fallon Aubee, the first male offender (to my knowledge) transferred federally as a result of self-ID. Dangerous offender Adam Laboucan is currently housed in the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia. To receive the designation of “dangerous offender” under Canadian law, there must be evidence that the offender has a pattern of brutally violent behavior that is overwhelmingly likely to persist. Laboucan was convicted of sexually assaulting a 3-month old baby, yet he is now living in a women’s prison that participates in the Institutional Mother-Child Program, which is run by the federal government “to foster positive relationships between federally incarcerated women and their children by providing a supportive environment that promotes stability and continuity for the mother-child relationship.” One feature of the program is that it allows young children to live with their incarcerated mothers in detached buildings referred to as “cottages.”
A CBC report on a 2010 decision to deny parole to Laboucan relays that he had threatened to kill a female guard, and that he had confessed to murdering a 3-year old child at the age of 11. (The Province reported that Laboucan also was denied parole in 2018. He had appealed this decision citing bias on behalf of the Parole Board but this was unsuccessful.)
Laboucan is not in a women’s prison as a result of Bill C-16 (which was cited to justify a policy of self-ID). He has been accommodated because, while incarcerated, he has undergone SRS. The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) has allowed men who have had this procedure to apply for transfers to women’s prisons since 2001. This policy stemmed from a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling (Kavanagh v. Canada), which declared that not allowing castrated male offenders accommodation in women’s prisons was discriminatory on the basis of sex and disability.
This policy accounts for CSC’s odd classification system. A male offender who has had SRS is recorded in the Offender Management System as a female, while an intact male is recorded as a male (even if it was merely his claim to be a woman that led to his incarceration in a women’s facility).
Matthew Harks recently was released from the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Ontario. He is a serial pedophile who has been convicted of three sexual assaults against girls under the age of 8. He has claimed to have abused 60 girls and to have committed 200 offenses. A 2006 psychiatric assessment of Harks maintained that he has an “all-encompassing preoccupation with sexually abusing underage girls.” Like Laboucan, Harks has undergone SRS, but this has not stopped him from facing multiple accusations of harassment and assault while incarcerated in a women’s prison. In 2016, the Calgary Herald reported that Harks was potentially facing charges for “three alleged offences that took place recently while [Harks] was in custody: assault, unlawful confinement and sexual assault.” The Vancouver Sun has reported that Harks has assaulted two female inmates who were “childlike in appearance.”
The commonly held belief that a castrated male offender poses minimal threat to females is a myth. There is certainly no rational reason why a male serial predator should be housed with women, many of whom have a history of being abused by men. Offenders are sent to prison as punishment. They are not sent to prison to be punished; and locking these women in with violent men is cruel and unusual punishment. It is well established that men and women have vastly different patterns of criminality. It is a basic fact that men are physically stronger than women, and that they regularly take advantage of this fact in every imaginable context to dominate and abuse women.
more at
https://quillette.com/2019/10/12/ma...risoned-with-women-why-do-so-few-people-care/
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