Mick Hartley

Still north of the border – Four of five trans inmates in women’s prisons are murderers:

Scottish prison authorities have been criticised for endangering vulnerable women after it emerged that four of the five transgender inmates held in the female prison estate are murderers.

It's almost like there's a pattern here: the more violent they are, the more likely they are to end up in a women's prison. That's quite an achievement. 

The presence of male-born killers in women’s jails, including Cornton Vale, is said to contradict the Scottish Prison Service’s “trauma-informed” strategy, which is designed to “ensure that living arrangements for women help to reduce fear and anxiety”. For Women Scotland, a campaign group opposed to the reforms that allow individuals to change their recorded sex by self-declaration, said the policy causes “trauma for some of the most vulnerable women by locking them up with incredibly dangerous, unpredictable men”.

It added: “Prison should be about rehabilitation, not mental torture, yet, as witnesses have attested, that is what this shockingly cruel policy amounted to. Everyone responsible should be ashamed and many should be investigated.”…

The four convicted murderers are:

• Alex Stewart, formerly Alan Baker, was jailed for life for murder in 2013 after stabbing the victim, John Weir, 16 times in Bonhill, Dunbartonshire.

• Sophie Eastwood, formerly Daniel Eastwood, then 19, was convicted of murder after strangling Paul Algie at a young offenders’ institution in Dumfries in 2004. That sentence was increased for an attack on a prison guard, before Eastwood reportedly self-identified as a woman in 2018. Eastwood is now said to identify as an infant and wants all meals “blended like baby food”.

• Paris Green, formerly Peter Laing, was jailed for a minimum of 18 years in 2013 for the murder of Robert Shankland, 45, in Glenrothes, Fife.

• Melissa Young, once Richard McCabe, was convicted of the murder of a neighbour in Edinburgh, Alan Williamson, on Christmas Day 2013. The victim sustained 29 stabbing injuries.

Kate Coleman, of Keep Prisons Single Sex, said: “These are violent male offenders, all four of whom have caused significant problems in the female estate . . . including sexual exhibitionism (Stewart and Eastwood), harassment and stalking (Eastwood), sexual threats and inappropriate sexual relationships (Green) and violent assault (Young).”…

A Scottish Prison Service spokesman said: “All trans men and trans women in our care are risk assessed.”

That's alright then….