Debate contribution: Custodial Facilities: Protection of Rights and Safety

Debate contribution by Ms Joanne Bunting on 20 January 2025.

MLA

Ms Joanne Bunting

Party at the time

Democratic Unionist Party

Date

20 January 2025

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Private Members' Business

Heading

Custodial Facilities: Protection of Rights and Safety

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 4744322

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I am grateful to colleagues for tabling the motion, which is on one of the most serious issues that women may face. All prisoners — indeed, everybody within and without the justice system — should, of course, be treated with courtesy, dignity and respect. However, in many aspects of life, women's rights and safe spaces are being eroded. That is a very serious issue of great concern to the public, and we must set down a marker and have clear guidance and policies. Some would seek to accommodate the wishes of a very small percentage of society at the expense of half the population. We must decide whether we will protect the rights of 50% of society, or sacrifice their rights and safety for the sake of a minority of men who want to be women or regard themselves as such. The DUP will continue to advocate for the preservation of women-only spaces, including in our prisons, as a matter of principle and justice. Safety and safeguarding must come first. Allowing biological males to reside among the female prisoner population risks undermining those protections and could have serious consequences for the safety and dignity of women. As I highlighted in the Chamber just last week:

"the issue of self-identification has the potential to be a predator's charter." [Official Report (Hansard), 13 January 2025, p27, col 1].

To avoid a rerun of other Members inferring from that something that I did not imply last week, let me be explicit: I am not equating transgenders to predators. Rather, I am saying that sexual predators will exploit self-ID. Those who present a serious risk and threat to women will absolutely seek to exploit self-identification, and any loophole that they can find, for their own sinister ends. It is only a matter of time. They will claim to identify as women specifically for the purpose of being put in confinement with women, either to prey on them or to have what they envisage as an easier time in a women's jail. It has already happened in other parts of the UK, so why would we think that we in Northern Ireland would be exempt? We must take steps to ensure that women are not prey. Of the 245 transgender prisoners in England and Wales who, as of 31 March 2024, reported their legal birth gender as male, 151 had been convicted of a sexual offence. We have therefore already seen, and should have learnt from, cases in England and Wales in which those convicted of rape and other sexually violent crimes self-identified as women and were placed in female prisons, to the severe detriment of biological female inmates, some of whom ended up being sexually assaulted as a consequence. That is so wrong. There was a subsequent public outcry, and, rightly, those woke policies and placements had to be reversed. I remain to be convinced that there can be any circumstances in which biological males should be able to serve their sentence in female prisons. Even the disparity in physical strength presents a difficulty. Last week, the Minister kept her focus on the rights of transgender females. I, too, wish them to be treated with dignity and for them to be kept safe, as I wish for all prisoners, but I suggest that the Minister should also give due consideration to the rights and safety of adult human females and be very careful about self-identification. The Minister has been keen to rubbish recent reporting of the court ruling that touched on those issues, yet we have not had sight of the instructions that she had indicated were issued to governors providing guidance on the management of transgender prisoners in August 2022. I will make no apology for standing up for biological women or for stating that, when men decide that they want to identify as women, it is always the hard-won rights of women that are depleted and their safety diminished and compromised.

I am worried about women. I will give way.

Thank you, Mr Speaker. I have points to make, so I am not going to engage in pettiness.

It is a serious issue.

Ironically, when the Executive are focused on tackling violence against women and girls, consideration is still being given, on a case-by-case basis, to allowing biological males into what should be a safe space for women, and, worse still, that is being done in the full knowledge of the numbers of vulnerable female inmates who have been abused and, as a result, are traumatised and suffering from mental ill health and anxiety. Prison is already a daunting place, even in a single-sex environment. There may be some in the Chamber who are unable, or unwilling, to define what a woman is. We are very clear, and it does not involve having male genitalia. Ultimately, the welfare of women in custody must be safeguarded, particularly given the vulnerability of some of the women who are in prison. The very rationale for the establishment of women-only prisons was so that the specific needs of female inmates, some of whom will have experienced trauma or abuse, were met. That is another less-debated issue on the safety of women and girls, and we need to be able to have serious conversations about it and its implications. It remains abundantly clear to me that adult biological males should not be permitted into any women's safe spaces: not sports, not toilets, not changing rooms, not shower cubicles and certainly not prisons. We must take a stand and make a choice to protect women and girls, as we have pledged to do.

935 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

Qualifying Gender, sexuality, abortion and related social issues

Jev’s structured answers

Assessed 21 October 2026 at 11:47 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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