Putting violent men in women’s prisons: where was Scottish civil society?

Introduction

This blog details our first attempt, via an academic article, to alert Scottish civil society to the Scottish Prison Service’s policy of placing some male prisoners in female prisons. We then look at how civil society, including academia and human rights charities, have responded more generally to the emergence of this issue in public debate.

We conclude that on this issue those whose paid day job is to provide an evidence-based critique of Scottish public policymaking have failed badly in a core civic role.

Background

In a landmark judgment published on 19 June 2026 Lady Ross ruled that the Scottish Prison Service’s (SPS) transgender prisoner policy, which allowed for the placement and treatment of prisoners based on their self-declared gender identity, was unlawful.

The judicial review was brought by unpaid campaign group For Women Scotland (FWS), following confirmation by the UK Supreme Court that sex in the Equality Act 2010 refers to biological sex, in a case also brought by FWS.

 A summary of the decision published by the Judiciary of Scotland explained: 

Sex segregation in prisons in Scotland is lawful.  The statutory scheme requires separate prison accommodation for men and women.  Following For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers [2025], this means sex segregation in prisons according to biological sex.

Insofar as the Prisons Guidance allows SPS to accommodate trans prisoners in prisons for the opposite biological sex, it is in conflict with the requirement that prison accommodation be provided separately for men and women. That constitutes a mis-statement of the law…

The Prisons Guidance is unlawful…

Judiciary of Scotland Petition of For Women Scotland for Judicial Review 19 June 2026

On 23 June Justice Minister Neil Gray announced that the Scottish Government had decided not to appeal the ruling. Mr Gray stated that the SPS had withdrawn the policy as of 22 June and work was underway to transfer prisoners.

Putting violent men in women’s prisons

The FWS judicial review brought to an end a period of well over a decade during which Scotland’s prison service, with the support of Ministers, had placed at least fourteen men with a recorded history of violence in the female prison estate.¹ These include:

• Alan Baker (Alex Stewart): murder
• Harryetta Thompson: grooming children, indecent exposure
• Shantelle Taylor: threatening and abusive behaviour
• Daniel (Sophie) Eastwood: murder
• Alan (Alannah) Morgan: violent offences
• Lennon (Katie) Dowlatoski: voyeurism, sexual assault
• Adam Graham (Isla Bryson): rape

Violent men placed in the women’s estate prior to the formal introduction of the SPS transgender prisoner policy include:

• Joseph/Nicola Wilson: violent offences
• Stuart Kelly/Katelyn Findlay: robbery, threatening behaviour, dishonesty, racially aggravated harassment, sexual offences
• Peter Laing/Paris Green: torture, sexual assault, murder
• Richard McCabe/Melissa Young: murder

The blog below provides more details on how the SPS developed the policy and the criminal histories of male prisoners placed in the female estate.

Kindness, vulnerability and emotional manipulation: embedding gender self-identification in public life

The SPS transgender prisoner policy came about through strategic lobbying by transactivists. As former Scottish Trans Director James Morton later explained, the introduction of gender self-identification into a population of vulnerable female prisoners served as a bridgehead for the roll-out of similar policies in Scottish hospitals, schools and other public services.

Reinforced by a misreading of the Equality Act 2010 and a narrative that emphasised inclusion, kindness, and vulnerability, gender self-identification subsequently became embedded across Scotlands public sector: in government, higher education, policing, health, national statistics, and other policy areas.

In 2016 Morton told the Scottish Parliament Equal Opportunities Committee:

‘For several years, we have worked successfully in partnership with the Scottish Prison Service. We are very pleased that the Scottish Prison Service has a more progressive and humane policy around trans people than the English prison service has, and that it places them in the gender estate that they identify with, even if their paperwork is not yet in order.’

Scottish Parliament Equal Opportunities Committee Official Report col. 15. 4 February 2016. Emphasis added.

Policy capture: losing sight of women’s rights

In early 2019 we submitted an academic paper ‘Losing Sight of Women’s Rights: the unregulated introduction of gender self-identification as a case study of policy capture in Scotland’ to the journal Scottish Affairs. It was published that August. Prior to this, there had been occasional press stories about the policy, particularly from 2018 onwards, but we believe our article was the first attempt to engage the interest of Scottish civil society in a more detailed, formal way.

This was one of our first pieces of work together as MBM. The paper was researched and written in a wholly voluntary capacity: Kath was on a part-time fixed-term research contract in the School of Law at the University of Edinburgh, Lucy was mid-way through a full-time PhD, at the same university’s School of Education, and Lisa was working part-time for a trade union, as discussed further below.

The paper presented two case studies where unregulated gender self-identification principles had gained hold: Scotland’s census and SPS policy on transgender prisoners. The paper can be accessed below:

Drawing on material obtained by Lisa through Freedom of Information in 2018 and desk research from primary sources, the analysis of SPS policy demonstrated that decision-making had focused exclusively on the interests of prisoners presenting as transgender. It showed that managers had wholly failed to recognise that the policy would adversely affect female prisoners and prison officers.

We framed this as an example of ‘policy capture’, whereby the interests of one group are prioritised, without due regard for others.

We argued that sex in the Equality Act 2010 referred to biological sex, reflecting that ‘the physical and social consequences of being born and living with a female body are so significant that women need specific protections in law and policy’. In respect of the embedding of gender self-identification in public life, we concluded:

That such a paradigm shift has taken place without formal scrutiny or proper monitoring, far ahead of legal change, raises a serious question as to why there has been such a persistent failure to consider the possible wider impacts of gender self-identification, especially on women. On one analysis, this simply reflects that women remain, as a group, less powerful than men. From another perspective, this may be read as a story of policy capture that demonstrates how easily systems can be influenced by determined organisations or interest groups, particularly in a small nation…

We also noted that:

… it is troubling that some women have not felt able to articulate their concerns about gender self-identification for fear of repercussions, including loss of employment.

In considering what followed next, readers are asked to note that our arguments about the meaning and salience of sex in the Equality Act were identical to the Supreme Court’s interpretation of that Act, nearly six years later, and that our position on the entitlement of women to single-sex accommodation in prisons was in line with the decision of the Court of Session last month. That is, whatever scope there may have been for academic discussion about the meaning of the law, the position we started from was well within the bounds of reason.

The institutional backlash

Edinburgh University press

Following acceptance by Scottish Affairs, a member of staff at the Edinburgh University Press (which publishes Scottish Affairs but has no editorial role) wrote an internal memo describing the article as transphobic, and comparable to anti-Semitic, homophobic, Islamophobic and sexist opinion, and argued it should not be published. The only example from the text provided to support this argument was the use of the word ‘women’ in the article to refer to people who are biologically female.

Rather than triaging this as an unreasonable attempt to interfere with publication, a senior member of EUP staff contacted the editor of Scottish Affairs to draw the memo to his attention, and also involved the University of Edinburgh legal team. Two of us were at the time members of the university, one as staff, the other as a student.

Internal correspondence (released to us by EUP) show emails between staff stating, ‘I’m fairly sure the article contravenes the University’s dignity and respect policy’, ‘journals are thinking about publishing an anti-trans article’ and noting ‘two of the three authors are UoE staff members.’ The article was also discussed at a ‘Core Values’ meeting in September 2019, at which it was described as ‘offensive’.

The eventual publication of the article rested on the willingness of the editor to stand fast against these claims.

Royal College of Nursing

Lisa is not a named author on the paper, despite her significant contribution. Having voluntarily shared the draft text with her then employers, the Royal College of Nursing (RCN), she was placed under immediate investigation at work for her co-authorship.

At a late stage she decided to remove her name, hoping this would reduce any risk to her employment. Her employers could not identify any specific part of the text which was inappropriate or problematic.

The investigation concluded without proceeding to any disciplinary action. Lisa was told instead to reflect on her “values.”  Deciding this and the attempt to manage her external work beyond the bounds of what was necessary or reasonable was a tipping point, and in September 2019 she resigned from her RCN role.

The academic backlash

In July 2020 the editor of Scottish Affairs received a response to our paper co-authored by Professor Sharon Cowan, a senior academic and former deputy head of the University of Edinburgh School of Law, Dr (now Professor) Meryl Kenny, also University of Edinburgh, Dr Rebecca Hewer, also University of Edinburgh and non-practising barrister, author/activist Harry Josephine Giles, Becky Kaufmann, then justice policy officer at the Scottish Trans Alliance, Sean Morris (a solicitor in employment law), and Dr Katie Nicoll Baines (a project manager at the University of Edinburgh). On its publication, Giles had described our paper as a ‘poorly-sourced conspiracy theory masquerading as an academic case study’ on social media.

A flavour of the published response is given from the abstract

… we aim to correct some of the erroneous statements made by Murray et al about legal definitions of sex and gender, and about discrimination law. In critically engaging with Murray et al’s argument we aim to build a much-needed clearer understanding of law and policy on sex and gender in Scotland, particularly as it relates to the application of the Equality Act 2010. We argue that, in that claiming that there has been policy capture in Scotland, Murray et al have neglected to contextualise ongoing debates about sex and gender in law against the backdrop of over two decades of clear legal and policy shifts across the UK. We call for researchers and others – in Scotland and elsewhere – to take care, particularly in interpreting and applying the law, especially as it applies to marginalised minority populations, so that we do not further obfuscate or mislead on important legal and social issues.

Cowan et al. (2020) Sex and gender equality law and policy: a response to Murray, Hunter Blackburn and Mackenzie, Scottish Affairs. Vol. 30 (1)

The original manuscript submitted by Cowan et al. concluded by describing our paper as ‘built on misinterpretation and selective reading of the law, mis-citations, non-sequiturs and partisan language’. Whilst the most damning comments were removed in the published copy, the original submitted version remains accessible on the University of Edinburgh website and is still linked to a number of the authors’ official publications pages.

Mis-stating the law

The response by Cowan et al. did not address our core argument, that public bodies had failed to consider women’s interests, as a result of policy capture by activists. They did however vigorously attack us for countenancing that the provisions in the Equality Act for single-sex services were based on sex as a lifelong physical state, asserting incorrectly that ‘the inclusion of trans people is a legally settled matter,’ meaning by this the inclusion of some people in services and spaces intended for people of the opposite sex.

For their position, the authors relied heavily on the EHRC Statutory Code of Practice for Services, Associations and Public Functions (2011). They mistakenly treated this as an authoritative legal source and were strongly critical of our failure to do the same.

The EHRC statutory codes are, however, only adjuncts to the law, not law-making documents themselves. This is clear in the 2006 Equality Act (Part 1 Section 15) under which the statutory codes are made. The introduction to the Code as published in 2011 makes this clear:

The Codes do not impose legal obligations. They are not an authoritative statement of the law; only the tribunals and the courts can provide such authority.

EHRC Statutory Code of Practice for Services, Associations and Public Functions 2011: 18

Subsequent to the Supreme Court’s ruling, the EHRC conceded that the parts of the 2011 version of the Code on which Cowan et al. relied were wrong. The Commission has since revised those parts to reflect the ruling, and this revised version is now waiting to be brought formally into effect.

We were invited by Scottish Affairs to provide a rapid reply to Cowan et al., to be published alongside it. The nature of the criticism levelled against us, which we felt went beyond ordinary academic critique and was potentially reputationally damaging, meant that we felt we had to respond. Once again, this work was done on a wholly voluntary basis,² in contrast to the more senior and secure full-time employment status of at least some of the authors of Cowan et al.

In November 2020 Cowan et al. pre-emptively released their response, breaking an understanding with Scottish Affairs that their article and our right of reply to it would be published at the same time. Thereafter Scottish Affairs published both papers simultaneously.   

We are not aware that any of the authors have retracted their uncompromising criticism of us for taking the legal position that we did, since the Supreme Court judgment in 2025.

Where was the rest of Scottish civil society?

Scottish civil society has a long history of holding the SPS to account. For example:

• Established in 1979, the penal charity Howard League Scotland campaigns for a ‘just, progressive and humane criminal justice system’ through evidence gathering and highlighting wider issues, particularly in relation to custody.
• The Scottish Human Rights Commission (SHRC) has engaged widely on prison issues, including work on deaths in custody and the prison complaints system. It is also involved in the independent monitoring of prisons in a review capacity. In 2024, the SHRC and UK National Preventive Mechanism jointly published An assessment of where human rights have stalled in places of detention, covering a range of issues such as inadequate mental health provision, prison conditions, overcrowding, and overuse of segregation.
• Women’s charities Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid and others have raised concerns about the automatic release of long-term prisoners.
• Within Scotland’s universities there is a rich body of academic research and advocacy on prisons. Researchers at the Scottish Centre for Crime and Justice Research (SCCJR) have addressed the prevalence of drug use in prisons, challenged the overuse of remand, and undertaken work on deaths in custody. A recent SCCJR evaluation assessed Community Custody Units (CCUs) for women and the operation of the SPS Women’s Strategy.
• The Scottish Prisoner Advocacy and Research Collective ‘campaign[s] for reform in the use of imprisonment’ using ‘political and academic’ methods that draw on ‘rigorous research and insider perspectives of prisons in Scotland to reduce excessive use of punishment’. Describing itself as inspired in part by the Black Panthers, its advocacy work includes issues such as healthcare in custody, prison progression, and licence conditions.

Yet for the most part, despite increasing media, political and public awareness, the placement of violent men in women’s prisons went unchallenged by Scottish civil society.

Penal charities and human rights organisations

Howard League Scotland noted only that its Executive Committee members and general membership respectively held divergent views.

In 2022 the SHRC submitted evidence to an SPS policy review of its transgender prisoner policy, lending its support to the placement of prisoners based on self-declared gender identity. Citing the activist authored and highly contested ‘Yogyakarta Principles’ (which centre gender identity and do not consider women rights) the SHRC advised:

The Yogyakarta Principles and Yogyakarta Plus 10 outline a series of standards relating to the right to treatment with humanity while in detention (Principle 9). Any policy developed by SPS should take into account these standards with a view to international best practice in human rights.

SHRC FAIR analysis submitted to the SPS Gender Identity and Gender Reassignment Policy Review August 2022

In a partial pivot in early 2026, the Scottish Human Rights Commission later conceded to the Court of Session that the SPS’s policymaking had failed to take women’s rights properly into account, in evidence to the Judicial Review brought by FWS.

Scottish Prison Service Advisory Board

The Chair of the SPS Advisory Board whose role is to ‘is to undertake an advisory, questioning and enabling function’ told us: ‘Non-Executive Directors of the Advisory Board are not involved directly in the decision making of operational matters including the development and/or endorsement of SPS operational and staffing policies’. Appearing nonetheless to endorse the policy, the Chair continued, ‘SPS policy on transgender people in custody supports the health, safety, and wellbeing of all people living and working in Scotland’s prisons, by taking an individualised approach to the admission, placement, and risk management of transgender people’ (email correspondence, 7 April 2025).

Women’s charities

An otherwise supportive FAQ on gender recognition reform published in early 2018 by government-funded charity Engender (which describes itself as ‘Scotland’s feminist policy and advocacy organization’), Zero Tolerance, Scottish Women’s Aid, Rape Crisis Scotland and other government-funded groups identified prisons as an area of concern:

Evidence from The British Psychological Society to the Women and Equalities Committee of the UK Parliament1 has flagged its concern at the small number of men convicted of sexual offences who (in their words) “falsely claim to be transgender females” in order to secure parole, explain their offending, or get increased access to women and children once they have been released from prison. They express concern that the GRA proposals will in some way enable this small group of perpetrators if mitigating action is not taken by criminal justice agencies.

Some of our organisations will be picking up the issue of women’s safety with Scottish Trans Alliance and the Scottish Prison Service and other relevant agencies, to explore plans for ensuring women’s safety in prison and in the community.

In May 2018 Lucy wrote to Engender with a series of questions about its position on prisons.³ The then Chief Executive told her ‘We will be having conversations with the prison service, along with violence against women organisations and Scottish Trans Alliance, and the Equality and Human Rights Commission on guidance on considering girls’ and women’s privacy, dignity, and safety in the context of service provision’ (email, 25 June 2018). Asked for an update, in November 2018 the then Chief Executive told Lucy that the member of staff leading on criminal justice was no longer working for Engender, and as such her evidence-gathering could not be shared. She added ‘What I can share is that our conversation with Scottish Government and Scottish Prison Service on these issues has not finished’ (email, 28 November 2018).

In May 2022 the SPS Interim Director of Strategy and Stakeholder Engagement told us: ‘I can confirm that SPS have no record of having been approached by a sub group of the violence against women organisations on this issue, as it was indicated they would, to share the knowledge/advice they had’ (email correspondence, 9 May 2022).

During the passage of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, an open letter from Rape Crisis Scotland to the UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls saw no difficulties with the existing policy and sought to provide reassurances that it would not be affected by the Bill.

Evidence was provided to the [Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee] regarding the individualised risk assessment approach applied by service providers in Scotland, such as the Scottish Prison Service, who confirmed that possession or otherwise of a GRC is not determinative of allocation, but only one factor considered in the overall risk assessment.

Rape Crisis Scotland statement on the open letter to Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, 30 November 2022

Engender did not respond to the 2023 SPS consultation on its transgender prisoner policy, which led to the now redundant 2024 policy. Nor did Rape Crisis Scotland, Scottish Women’s Aid or Zero Tolerance, despite their clear locus.

Academics

Of the small academic literature that is available, to the best of our knowledge the SPS policy was variously misinterpreted, downplayed, dismissed, or not covered.

Predating Cowan et al. a 2011 paper by Boldt and Phillips published by the Law Society of Scotland wrongly asserted ‘Wherever possible transgender suspects or offenders have to be placed in a prison along with people from their chosen non-birth gender, whether or not they have changed their physical sex appearance or received a gender-recognition certificate’.

Research by Maycock described female prisoners who did not view men as women as prejudicial.⁴ Unpublished research by Maycock (when employed as an SPS researcher) described female prisoner officers who did not want to search men as exhibiting ‘aspects of prudeness (sic), conservatism or bigotry and perhaps elements of transphobia’ and as unprofessional.⁵

The sole exception to this of which we are aware is human rights expert Dr Claire Methven O’Brien, of the University of Dundee, and also a member of the SHRC. Writing in personal capacity, she has written a number of pieces (for example, here).

Other detailed research and commentary was instead provided by volunteer groups, such as Keep Prisons Single Sex and Women and Girls Scotland, or individuals with detailed knowledge, most obviously former prison governor, Rhona Hotchkiss.

Conclusion

The strategies used to target our paper, including misrepresentation of the law, attempted censorship, a workplace investigation, and the dismissal of sex-based protections as fundamentally wrong, even literally unspeakable, are the same as those used to secure compliance across public life more widely.

This was further illustrated by events in October 2019, when Professor Cowan was later described by a group of survivors of sexual abuse as having unexpectedly attended a meeting arranged with the Edinburgh Rape Crisis Centre and Rape Crisis Scotland. The survivors stated that Professor Cowan ‘repeated several times that female survivors did not have any rights in law at all to expect a female-only service; that men with the protected characteristic of gender reassignment could never be excluded from a female-only service’ and that ‘the sex-based exceptions in the Equality Act 2010 could not be applied because of a lack of case law confirming that those were legal,’ pre-figuring the legally incorrect argument used in the response to our paper.

The points we made in ‘Losing Sight of Women’s Rights’ were reasonable, and reasonably presented, both as regards the law and the policy process. The Scottish Human Rights Commission conceded to the Court of Session that the SPS’s policymaking had failed to take women’s rights properly into account. Subsequent court rulings show our position on the law was fully defensible and legally sound. Looking back, we feel we can say with confidence that the treatment we received in response to our first attempt to interest wider Scottish civil society in what was happening in Scotland’s prisons, including from people employed in senior roles, was by contrast unreasonable, unduly personal, and rigidly incorrect about the law.

We doubt that the near-total absence of civic engagement on this issue can be detached from the climate created by the sort of behaviour we experienced. The same general climate is also evidenced by numerous testimonies in the second report of the Sullivan Review Barriers to research on sex and gender (to which we provided research support). We note that the one academic voice in Scotland, Dr Claire Methven O’ Brien, routinely feels the need to state that she is writing ‘in a personal capacity’, indicating the lack of institutional cover for raising concerns about the policy.

When it came to the housing of violent men in women’s prisons, despite increasing media and political interest, most salaried professionals in Scotland with relevant expertise either remained silent or threw their weight behind gender self-identification. Ministers felt no pressure from relevant groups and individuals in the mainstream. In the end, it took an unpaid campaign group prepared to bring repeated legal cases to ensure that women prisoners were no longer locked up with violent men, years after the policy was first brought to light. On this issue, those whose job is to provide an evidence-based critique of Scottish public policymaking failed badly in a core civic role.

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Notes

1. The judicial review brought by FWS challenged the SPS transgender prisoner policy issued in 2024. For the most part, the 2024 policy represented a continuation of the SPS’s 2014 policy, which formally introduced self-identification principles to the Scottish prison estate. Press reports further show that the SPS housed men in the women’s estate prior to 2014.  ↩︎
2. By this point, MBM had raised a total of around £12,000 through crowdfunding in late 2019 and summer 2020, to help support our input to the consultation on the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill and the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill. The second of these was MBM’s main focus from April 2020 and consuming much of our available time outside our existing commitments. Our personal circumstances otherwise remained as before, other than that Lisa’s part-time employment was no longer with the RCN. ↩︎
3. Engender was asked:
   
   – Has Engender done any work directly with women in prison (prisoners and staff) to establish their views on the operation of the existing policy?
    – Does possession of a GRC make any difference to the SPS’s ability to exercise discretion about the placing of an individual prisoner?
    – What difference does possession of a GRC make to the ability of staff to share information about a prisoner, particularly the provisions of s22 of the GRA? In particular, does a GRC change whether custody staff will be aware that a prisoner in their care is trans; does it affect how far staff can refer to a person retaining any particular male characteristics or any offences committed pre-transition, when discussing risk management? Could s22 prevent a member of staff having to refuse to affirm a woman’s direct observation that a person with whom she is sharing accommodation still has male genitalia?
    – Are there any circumstances in which a woman in prison who is not trans might be expected to share sleeping or non-private showering facilities with a transwoman? If so, are women prisoners consulted about their willingness to do this in principle, and can they refuse to give their consent if they do not wish to?  Does whether or not a person has a GRC affect these answers? ↩︎
4. ‘Around half of the participants in this study, held views that were more closely aligned to the prejudiced views towards transgender people outlined in the British Social Attitudes Survey. Within the prison context this took a particular manifestation, insofar as some participants did not consider the transgender people they lived with as female, and in some instances suggested that they should be located in halls within prisons of their birth sex (in this instance located in male halls). These views are reflective of wider prejudices within society…’ (emphasis added).
   See: Maycock, M. (2022) ‘She Was Just Like A Lassie’: Analysing The Views of Cis-Women In Custody About Their Experiences of Living With Transgender Women In The Scottish Prison Estate. British Journal of Criminology, Volume 62 (4) ↩︎
5. ‘There is a recurring biological reductionism… pointing to the significance of male genitalia being problematic for cis-female staff to search. Professional behaviour which supports a biological definition of gender, rather than the self-identified lived gender is inconsistent with SPS policy and the professional standards required of officers.’
   See: Maycock, M (2020). “Outside in society, society moves on, society attitudes change, within a prison that doesn’t happen unless you’re forced to.” Operational prison staffs’ attitudes to working with transgender people in custody. ↩︎