Transgender women should not be held in women's prisons, as Adam Graham/Isla Bryson case showed – Susan Dalgety

New Scottish Prison Service policy does not give Susan Dalgety hope that what it calls ‘non-transgender women’ will be adequately protected

Fans of the classic Australian soap, Prisoner: Cell Block H, may recognise this slogan: “If you think prison is hell for a man, imagine what it would be like for a woman?” Rhona Hotchkiss, a small, grey-haired woman, full of vim and vigour and with a biting wit, looks more like the NHS nurse she once was than the firm but fair prison governor she became.

She retired from her last post, as head of HMP Greenock, in 2019, but for more than two years from 2014 she was governor of HMP Cornton Vale – Scotland’s female prison. She doesn’t need to imagine what prison is like for a woman. She knows.

Cornton Vale’s replacement – HMP & YOI Stirling – is nothing like the grim Cell Block H. Indeed, with its housing units named Primrose, Bluebell and Iris, it could pass for a boutique spa hotel. But look behind the flowery names and the soft furnishings, and it is still a prison. The women living there have no choice. They cannot check out until their sentence is served. Their comfortable bedroom cannot mask the fact that it is a prison cell. They are incarcerated. And Rhona Hotchkiss is angry on their behalf.

Isla Bryson, formerly known as Adam Graham, was found guilty of raping two women (Picture: Andrew Milligan/PA)

Last week, around 100 women gathered in a grand room in central Edinburgh to listen to a range of female speakers talk about violence against women and girls. The conference, which had been organised under strict secrecy to ward off potential protesters, marked the first birthday of Beira’s Place, the sexual violence support service set up by author JK Rowling. It is for women, run by women.

Sex offenders in women’s prison

Rhona Hotchkiss is one of its trustees and was co-chair of the birthday event. And by coincidence her former employers, the Scottish Prison Service, decided that morning to issue their long-awaited guidance on transgender prisoners. She was scathing.

“It’s only five years overdue, but let’s not get too churlish about it, they have at least produced it now,” she said, before going on to demolish the updated policy. It was being spun as a considered response to the public outcry that followed a double rapist, Adam Graham (also known as Isla Bryson), being sent to Cornton Vale in January for assessment before sentencing. Rhona Hotchkiss disagreed.

Her main contention, confirmed by a close reading of the policy, is that biologically male offenders who identify as transgender, including those who have committed sex crimes, will still have the right to spend their sentence in a women’s prison.

Or as one newspaper headline put it: “Trans inmates with history of violence against women to be mostly kept out of female Scottish jails.” “Mostly” being the operative word. The new policy will allow a transgender prisoner to be housed in the female estate where there is “compelling evidence” that they do not “present an unacceptable risk of harm to those in the women’s prison”.

“What is an acceptable risk to women?” asked Rhona Hotchkiss. “Is it a five per cent chance they will be assaulted, is it a 60 per cent chance they will be assaulted? The fact that they [the Scottish Prison Service] are willing to take a risk with women’s safety at all is just unacceptable.”

No place for violence against women

To be fair, the report did point out the prison service had considered the risk. It says: “Some external stakeholders were particularly concerned about the vulnerability of non-transgender women in prison and the need for them to be protected from further harm.” And it went on to say that predatory and violent behaviour towards women in prison “also came from other women” and that it was “stigmatising to suggest that only transgender women are a threat”.

Let’s pause there for a moment. The Scottish Prison Service has just re-classified female prisoners as “non-transgender women” and says that those who argue that no level of risk is acceptable may be guilty of prejudice. Oh, and women are violent too.

The Scottish Prison Service report came out just ahead of a “refresh” of Equally Safe, the Scottish Government and Cosla’s national strategy to tackle violence against women and girls. Victims minister Siobhian Brown MSP said on its publication last week: “Violence against women and girls has no place in our society.”

And in the strategy’s foreword, she and Councillor Maureen Chalmers of Cosla wrote that they will work together across all sectors to establish a “unified and collective approach”, adding that this will mean public systems and services joining forces to “prevent violence and to provide safety”. Has the minister sent a copy of Equally Safe to Theresa Medhurst, head of the Scottish Prisons Service, I wonder? And to her boss Angela Constance, the Justice Secretary?

The Angiolini Commission on Women Offenders’ report, published in 2012, exposed what experts like Rhona Hotchkiss already knew: that women in prison are one of the most vulnerable groups in Scotland. Many are victims of sexual and physical violence. And a recent Scottish Government review of women in the justice system shows that most violent crimes are carried out by male offenders – a consistent finding over the years, says the review.

A year ago, JK Rowling set up Beira’s Place to provide women survivors of sexual violence in Edinburgh and the Lothians with a safe space, where only women were allowed. More than 250 women have been supported in the last 12 months. There are around 280 women prisoners in Scotland. They too deserve – indeed require – a safe space in which to live, free from the risk of male violence.

Not all biological men who identify as transgender are violent, by any means. But they were all born male. Women’s prisons should be female only. Anything else risks male violence against women, which, as the Scottish Government tells us, has no place in our society. It has no place in women’s prisons either.