I don’t think many people will dispute the fact that males are responsible for the vast majority of sexual offences, and females make up the vast majority of victims. Of course, of course, #NotAllMen and so on but this is, ultimately, one of the key reasons we have separate spaces – it is a pragmatic way we have established for protecting the safety of women and girls. Imperfect, but effective.
I have one quibble - the Swedish long-term followup study is no less valid for being completed 20 years ago. Long-term followup studies by necessity start a long time ago, studies on human behavior generally don't have a shelf life, and none of the key factors that influenced the results have changed in 20 years as far as I can tell - the hormones and surgery methods are the same, crime and mental health stats collection methods are the same, etc.
TRAs criticize the study and its interpretations in any way they can, of course, including claiming that it is outdated, but they just throw as much crap against the wall as they can hoping it will stick.
Agreed - that's an absolutely valid point about the Swedish study.
I'll add something to clarify in the article, but what I was getting at is more that because it was so long ago, it was a very different group to the typical trans-identified male we see today, who may simply have self-identified and undergone no medicalisation whatsoever.
Absolutely right. It’s (male sexual aggression, assaults & violence) actually getting worse because of the proliferation of violent & abusive porn as well as a more permissive & accepting culture around kink. I’m no prude but this is a real problem.
My response to TRAs is always to ask that they compare the Swedish trans suicide rate in 1973-2003 with other minority groups of that period. Because if they do, they'll see that minority stress can't be the explanation for that high suicide rate.
For example, US black suicide rate in 1970 was 6.2/100K versus the general population's of 11.6/100K. For Native Americans in 1980 their suicide rate was 19.4/100K versus 11.5/100K for the general population.
I'd say that black and Native Americans are subject to poverty and discrimination to a worse degree in the US than POC in Sweden. Yet their suicide rates were around 0.5x and 1.7x the general population in the US versus Swedish trans suicide rate of 19x between 1973-2003.
Current suicide rate for bipolar disorder is 10-30x the general population despite advancements in medicine and social acceptance. With a trans suicide rate of 19x as it was in Sweden, that'd suggest that gender dysphoria is a lifelong MH issue that doesn't resolve with medical transition.
Simlarly with crime, back in 1989 when UK society was even more racist than now, only 8% of black prisoners were sex offenders. Contrast that with an astonishing 58% of TW prisoners being sex offenders today. It's got nothing to do with oppression!
I don't know if you can assume that the category of "trans women" includes "non-binary" people, not when you see that the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) considers them as two separate categories:
According to the MOJ, there are 230 gender diverse prisoners, 168 of whom are transwomen, 42 are transmen, 13 of whom are non-binary and 7 are unidentified.
There are 181 gender diverse prisoners in male prisons, of which 162 are transwomen. So my guess is the other 19 are non-binary/unidentified males since I'd expect there to be zero transmen in England and Wales male prisons, at least that was the case in 2019.
This page is useful and has links to both Scotland, and England & Wales prison stats:
I agree it's not 100% clear - I'm working on the basis of the most conservative numbers to be able to say "the offending rate is at least X" - I suspect it may very well be higher than males in general, but I'd rather quote a figure that can be robustly defended as a minimum, than leave myself open to accusations of misleadingly inflating the rates. There's some additional FOI requests open that would provide more data, and I'll update when they have responses.
Glad that the FOI was able to clarify. It means that TIM have an incredibly high rate of sex offending, higher than non-trans men, or some TIM prisoners are lying about being trans.
The number of TW in prison is 92 in March 2021 according to Ministry of Justice figures quoted by Victoria Atkins, the Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation:
True - and another problem with that number is that it regards "transgender women with a conviction for at least one sexual offence" which is not directly comparable to the wider statistics quoted for the prison population, which are on the basis of the "principal offence" being a sexual offence. Again, further FOI requests will hopefully clear this up.
Statistically, 56 and 92 TIM numbers respective are likely not large enough to make the result statistically valid - meaning the numbers are too small to draw a conclusion.
The other potential issue with these two numbers is that there has been a rise in prisoners claiming to be trans women in order to gain protection or get moved to a more favorable prison.
"The number of transgender prisoners increased following the new regulations. Thevfirst statistics were collected in the beginning of April 2016. There were 70 transgender prisoners, defined as ‘currently living in, or are presenting in, a gender different to their sex assigned at birth’ and as having had a case conference under the 2011 regulations (Ministry of Justice 2016, p. 2). This number excluded prisoners with a gender recognition certificate, like Karen Jones. The new regulations came into force in January 2017. Three months later the number of transgender prisoners had almost doubled to 125 (Ministry of Justice 2017, p. 13). The growth might have reflected the new dispensation which incentivized prisoners to declare a gender identity."
"It has been rather naïvely suggested 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. 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. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this."
The biggest problem with this is the use of census data for trans population. Queer people do not like registering as such because they don't like giving power ways to identify them. The 0.5% trans people in the UK is 3% in Germany, a much more accepting environment. Thus, the proportion of trans people in prison for sexual offences is going to look high. The ones in prison have nothing to lose by saying they are trans at that point, and may need medications that would require them to out themselves.
Thank you for creating your wonderful infographic. I've been using it quite a bit on social media. However, a few TRAs have been criticising it. I wonder if you can tell me if they have any validity to their claims. I don't think they have but it's got me wondering. TRAs keep claiming that because there are only 56 TIM in prison, out of a population of millions in the UK, that's too small a number to be able to infer anything from accurately. They also claim you can't legitimately compare a population of 48,000 TIM with a male population of 29 million, nor a prison population of 92 TIM sex offenders with 11,000 male sex offenders. They seem to think when populations are magnitudes different you can't make an accurate comparison. I can't see how that would be, but so many of them keep repeating this that I wonder if there's something I'm missing?
The latest TRA I've been debating this with seems to think it's inaccurate to compare simple population ratios, especially when there's such a huge difference in population size, and that there's a more complex application of ratios within science. But surely that argument would only apply if you were 'sampling' from populations? I don't think a known number of convicted prisoners constitute a 'sample' from a population, does it?
See comment above - the number is unlikely to be statistically significant, so generalizing from the small sample size to a large population is unlikely to be accurate on the larger population.
The other issue that I noted above is that prisoners are labeling themselves as trans to get to a favorable prison environment, thus warping the data further.
You are incorrect. Look up what constitutes a "sample" in statistics, which I did. The number of TIM sex offenders in prison isn't a random representative sample from a survey or for a study but is the ACTUAL population in prison. That means critiques regarding statistical errors in sampling don't apply as we're not dealing with a "sample".
For example, the numbers of deaths from road accidents in London last year was 102. That's not a "sample" from the London population but the actual number of road traffic deaths. So when we say the rate of road traffic deaths in London last year was 1 in 95,000, that is the actual rate and not an estimated one from sampling.
Thus it would be inaccurate to say that the 102 road traffic deaths in London last year is a "small sample size" and not representative of London, just as it would be inaccurate to say that the 56 TIM sex offenders in prison as of March 2021 is a small sample size and not representative of the TIM population.
And regarding male prisoners pretending to be 'trans' to get into women's prisons, that's one of our arguments. How can you tell who's 'trans' and who isn't? What's to stop male sex offenders and perverts from claiming to be women and accessing women's prisons, refuges, wards, bathrooms and changing rooms whenever they get an itch to do so? This is not some imagined scenario but is happening increasingly internationally e.g:
Most TIM are heterosexual and don't have surgery, plus they commit crime at the same rates as other men according to Dhejne's peer-reviewed survey of the entire transsexual population of Sweden over 30 years. So basically men are men and it's a complete fantasy that TIM somehow have a magical woman essence that makes them special and not like other men.
You're correct in your comment on sample - it's not a sample - my mistake.
Having said that, the question is still whether you can generalize that number to the general population of trans people to determine whether or not trans people are more likely to offend.
Given that we don’t have an accurate count of the number of trans people in the general population (a number that is likely undercounted in a survey due to fear) and the number of actual trans people is documented as over counted (by people pretending to be trans in prisons), we can’t use those numbers to make any judgement about trans people in the general population.
Clearly the prisons need to do a better job or have more specific definitions or guidelines in order to reduce these horrible incidents - but sadly sexual assault is common in prison among all populations.
Nice thorough job, thank you!
I have one quibble - the Swedish long-term followup study is no less valid for being completed 20 years ago. Long-term followup studies by necessity start a long time ago, studies on human behavior generally don't have a shelf life, and none of the key factors that influenced the results have changed in 20 years as far as I can tell - the hormones and surgery methods are the same, crime and mental health stats collection methods are the same, etc.
TRAs criticize the study and its interpretations in any way they can, of course, including claiming that it is outdated, but they just throw as much crap against the wall as they can hoping it will stick.
Agreed - that's an absolutely valid point about the Swedish study.
I'll add something to clarify in the article, but what I was getting at is more that because it was so long ago, it was a very different group to the typical trans-identified male we see today, who may simply have self-identified and undergone no medicalisation whatsoever.
I've updated the text now - thanks for raising this :)
Absolutely right. It’s (male sexual aggression, assaults & violence) actually getting worse because of the proliferation of violent & abusive porn as well as a more permissive & accepting culture around kink. I’m no prude but this is a real problem.
My response to TRAs is always to ask that they compare the Swedish trans suicide rate in 1973-2003 with other minority groups of that period. Because if they do, they'll see that minority stress can't be the explanation for that high suicide rate.
For example, US black suicide rate in 1970 was 6.2/100K versus the general population's of 11.6/100K. For Native Americans in 1980 their suicide rate was 19.4/100K versus 11.5/100K for the general population.
I'd say that black and Native Americans are subject to poverty and discrimination to a worse degree in the US than POC in Sweden. Yet their suicide rates were around 0.5x and 1.7x the general population in the US versus Swedish trans suicide rate of 19x between 1973-2003.
Current suicide rate for bipolar disorder is 10-30x the general population despite advancements in medicine and social acceptance. With a trans suicide rate of 19x as it was in Sweden, that'd suggest that gender dysphoria is a lifelong MH issue that doesn't resolve with medical transition.
Simlarly with crime, back in 1989 when UK society was even more racist than now, only 8% of black prisoners were sex offenders. Contrast that with an astonishing 58% of TW prisoners being sex offenders today. It's got nothing to do with oppression!
Don’t worry! They’ll keep assigning violent & sexual crimes committed by transwomen to women until the rates even out.
Dark! But some truth to this :(
It’s literally happening. Many victims are even being forced to refer to their rapists as “she”! Check out https://gendercriticalqrproject.com/2020/06/13/these-are-not-our-crimes/ One can only hope someone with some common sense is keeping the “real” records!
Thank you for doing good analysis not led by any kind of ideology.
Regardless of the trans implications, these graphs tell a story of failed cultural and systemic support for male mental and sexual health.
I don't know if you can assume that the category of "trans women" includes "non-binary" people, not when you see that the Ministry of Justice (MOJ) considers them as two separate categories:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1119803/HMPPS_Offender_Equalities_2021-22_Report.pdf
According to the MOJ, there are 230 gender diverse prisoners, 168 of whom are transwomen, 42 are transmen, 13 of whom are non-binary and 7 are unidentified.
There are 181 gender diverse prisoners in male prisons, of which 162 are transwomen. So my guess is the other 19 are non-binary/unidentified males since I'd expect there to be zero transmen in England and Wales male prisons, at least that was the case in 2019.
This page is useful and has links to both Scotland, and England & Wales prison stats:
https://theferret.scot/policy-trans-people-prisons-uk/
I agree it's not 100% clear - I'm working on the basis of the most conservative numbers to be able to say "the offending rate is at least X" - I suspect it may very well be higher than males in general, but I'd rather quote a figure that can be robustly defended as a minimum, than leave myself open to accusations of misleadingly inflating the rates. There's some additional FOI requests open that would provide more data, and I'll update when they have responses.
Latest FOI in fact clarifies it is only males who identify as women and excludes non-binary and other identities. See new updates at end of article.
Glad that the FOI was able to clarify. It means that TIM have an incredibly high rate of sex offending, higher than non-trans men, or some TIM prisoners are lying about being trans.
The number of TW in prison is 92 in March 2021 according to Ministry of Justice figures quoted by Victoria Atkins, the Minister of State for Prisons, Parole and Probation:
https://questions-statements.parliament.uk/written-questions/detail/2022-01-06/98878
The 92 figure quoted appears to be for "trans women" only. There's no mention of any other gender identities.
True - and another problem with that number is that it regards "transgender women with a conviction for at least one sexual offence" which is not directly comparable to the wider statistics quoted for the prison population, which are on the basis of the "principal offence" being a sexual offence. Again, further FOI requests will hopefully clear this up.
Statistically, 56 and 92 TIM numbers respective are likely not large enough to make the result statistically valid - meaning the numbers are too small to draw a conclusion.
The other potential issue with these two numbers is that there has been a rise in prisoners claiming to be trans women in order to gain protection or get moved to a more favorable prison.
Source: https://committees.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/18973/pdf/
"The number of transgender prisoners increased following the new regulations. Thevfirst statistics were collected in the beginning of April 2016. There were 70 transgender prisoners, defined as ‘currently living in, or are presenting in, a gender different to their sex assigned at birth’ and as having had a case conference under the 2011 regulations (Ministry of Justice 2016, p. 2). This number excluded prisoners with a gender recognition certificate, like Karen Jones. The new regulations came into force in January 2017. Three months later the number of transgender prisoners had almost doubled to 125 (Ministry of Justice 2017, p. 13). The growth might have reflected the new dispensation which incentivized prisoners to declare a gender identity."
"It has been rather naïvely suggested 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. 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. I am sure that the Governor concerned would be happy to talk about this."
The biggest problem with this is the use of census data for trans population. Queer people do not like registering as such because they don't like giving power ways to identify them. The 0.5% trans people in the UK is 3% in Germany, a much more accepting environment. Thus, the proportion of trans people in prison for sexual offences is going to look high. The ones in prison have nothing to lose by saying they are trans at that point, and may need medications that would require them to out themselves.
Thank you for creating your wonderful infographic. I've been using it quite a bit on social media. However, a few TRAs have been criticising it. I wonder if you can tell me if they have any validity to their claims. I don't think they have but it's got me wondering. TRAs keep claiming that because there are only 56 TIM in prison, out of a population of millions in the UK, that's too small a number to be able to infer anything from accurately. They also claim you can't legitimately compare a population of 48,000 TIM with a male population of 29 million, nor a prison population of 92 TIM sex offenders with 11,000 male sex offenders. They seem to think when populations are magnitudes different you can't make an accurate comparison. I can't see how that would be, but so many of them keep repeating this that I wonder if there's something I'm missing?
The latest TRA I've been debating this with seems to think it's inaccurate to compare simple population ratios, especially when there's such a huge difference in population size, and that there's a more complex application of ratios within science. But surely that argument would only apply if you were 'sampling' from populations? I don't think a known number of convicted prisoners constitute a 'sample' from a population, does it?
See comment above - the number is unlikely to be statistically significant, so generalizing from the small sample size to a large population is unlikely to be accurate on the larger population.
The other issue that I noted above is that prisoners are labeling themselves as trans to get to a favorable prison environment, thus warping the data further.
You are incorrect. Look up what constitutes a "sample" in statistics, which I did. The number of TIM sex offenders in prison isn't a random representative sample from a survey or for a study but is the ACTUAL population in prison. That means critiques regarding statistical errors in sampling don't apply as we're not dealing with a "sample".
For example, the numbers of deaths from road accidents in London last year was 102. That's not a "sample" from the London population but the actual number of road traffic deaths. So when we say the rate of road traffic deaths in London last year was 1 in 95,000, that is the actual rate and not an estimated one from sampling.
Thus it would be inaccurate to say that the 102 road traffic deaths in London last year is a "small sample size" and not representative of London, just as it would be inaccurate to say that the 56 TIM sex offenders in prison as of March 2021 is a small sample size and not representative of the TIM population.
And regarding male prisoners pretending to be 'trans' to get into women's prisons, that's one of our arguments. How can you tell who's 'trans' and who isn't? What's to stop male sex offenders and perverts from claiming to be women and accessing women's prisons, refuges, wards, bathrooms and changing rooms whenever they get an itch to do so? This is not some imagined scenario but is happening increasingly internationally e.g:
https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/16/transgender-woman-18-sexually-assaulted-girl-10-morrisons-toilet-8914577
https://www.womenarehuman.com/rising-abuse-sexual-violence-against-incarcerated-women-by-male-transgender-inmates/
https://reduxx.info/male-sex-offender-identified-as-woman-to-access-womens-shelter-allegedly-raped-a-female-resident/
https://torontosun.com/2014/02/26/predator-who-claimed-to-be-transgender-declared-dangerous-offender
https://archive.ph/OLaXE
https://www.westernstandard.news/news/protests-launched-against-naked-man-in-the-little-girls-changing-room-in-saskatoon-pool/article_541d2066-a0d2-11ed-88cd-db9af5f25efc.html
https://reduxx.info/exclusive-trans-woman-confronted-by-mother-in-swimming-pool-locker-room-is-a-convicted-pedophile/
https://reduxx.info/trans-identified-male-charged-with-indecent-exposure-after-using-womens-changing-rooms-at-ohio-ymca/
https://nypost.com/2021/09/17/wi-spa-suspect-still-at-large-has-history-of-indecent-exposure-and-masturbation
https://reduxx.info/georgia-man-arrested-after-exposing-himself-to-15-year-old-girl-in-planet-fitness-locker-room/
Most TIM are heterosexual and don't have surgery, plus they commit crime at the same rates as other men according to Dhejne's peer-reviewed survey of the entire transsexual population of Sweden over 30 years. So basically men are men and it's a complete fantasy that TIM somehow have a magical woman essence that makes them special and not like other men.
You're correct in your comment on sample - it's not a sample - my mistake.
Having said that, the question is still whether you can generalize that number to the general population of trans people to determine whether or not trans people are more likely to offend.
Given that we don’t have an accurate count of the number of trans people in the general population (a number that is likely undercounted in a survey due to fear) and the number of actual trans people is documented as over counted (by people pretending to be trans in prisons), we can’t use those numbers to make any judgement about trans people in the general population.
Clearly the prisons need to do a better job or have more specific definitions or guidelines in order to reduce these horrible incidents - but sadly sexual assault is common in prison among all populations.