Transsexuals and crime statistics

We have been concerned by several stories in the media about horrific sounding attacks by 'transgender women' - on both men and women.

A major issue is over the impact this has on crime statistics - specifically - How are these crimes being recorded?

There seems an implication that police are relying on what the arrested person declares their sex to be and does not make further checks for fear of being accused of transphobia.

In our view this would be unacceptable if it results in figures for violent assaults carried out by women to be escalated in future records.

We wish to point out that under 5000 people in the UK have legally altered their sex via the existing Gender Recognition Act, which requires psychological assessment and medical approval in order to do so.

Self-ID might be employed via the Equality Act in certain circumstances for access to spaces, but in our opinion legal sex should be what is recorded in terms of legality such as criminal charges and, even then, trans status could also be indicated if it were relevant.


Of under 5000 people who have legally altered their sex marker only at most 3000 are transsexual women who have also obtained a copy of a legally altered birth certficate denoting this.


The chances of all the recent 'trans women' arrested for violent offences being in that number are slight, given the estimated 500,000 transgender people in the UK.

Police are allowed to access birth certificate records during their investigation of a crime even for those who are in this 3000. It is necessary to do that for the true facts to be established and transparency against abuse of identity during the commission of any crime - such as fraud  - to be possible under the current rules of the Gender Recognition Act.

We wonder how often police are actually doing this - and if not, then why not?

As transsexual women we support that right of access in legitimate circumstances such as these.

We feel it is important that correct information is entered into crime statistics and that it is a betrayal of women not to do so as the impact on them from misleading data left for future generations is clear if this is not done.

It is also a betrayal of transsexual women such as the authors of this blog - who followed all the existing rules.


We were medically and psychologically assessed in a process that involved lengthy physical transition because we believed that society deserved that level of reassurance.  And we willingly left the decision on whether our birth certificate marker should be changed to doctors, not our own feelings.

If we achieved a change of legal status in the right way and yet accept that police should still have access to accurate information, then how can it be right to not correctly record someone in official statistics?

Especially not someone who has had no medical and psychological assessment but is simply self-identifying to the authorities as regards their apparent change of sex?