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It looks like the Ministry of Justice has a big problem on it’s hands. It doesn’t know why nearly a thousand inmates are even in prison.

Livejournal comments on my last post about sex ventured into the territory of prisoners and how reproductive rights work when there’s nobody about to reproduce with. I looked up prisoner numbers (PDF link to justice.gov.uk) to see how many of them served sentences long enough for this to be a problem and found a wonderful table detailing types of offence. The data is repeated in several places, but the best table is on page 9.

There are 935 prisoners currently in prison listed as “Offence not recorded”. This is separate from “Other offences”. 17 of those were children under 18 but over 14. This is of a total prison population of 71,103 in August 2010, of which 1,222 are children.

One individual who saw this today works for the prison service and his reaction was described as “baffled”. I’ll bet!

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Apart from the sex-by-deception case that’s in court again this week, there’s another sex-related case doing the rounds of the internet at the moment. I find this one very interesting for the liberal dilemma that it raises, being the case of the man “banned” by the court from having sex (The Telegraph) because his IQ is “too low”.

Firstly, let’s refer to the exact court report to clear up a few bits that have been misreported elsewhere. Most notably, he appears to be bisexual, not gay, but towards the homosexual end of the spectrum. Secondly, it’s not specifically his IQ that’s discussed beyond the opening paragraphs but more his inability to understand the consequences (Health risks and pregnancy) of his actions. The judge himself notes that 0.5% of the population have an IQ that’s 50 or below (In this case, his IQ is 48) which equates to quarter of a million adults. I hope we’re not about to try to stop quarter of a million people having sex, even if it was possible to do so.

And finally, the order is merely to leave existing restrictions in place for six months while sex education is organised.

Although it’s not in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, I regard reproduction as a fairly basic human right. If we consider it otherwise, we’re crossing a dangerous line into eugenics such as the forced sterilization carried out in Australia and other countries. You can probably already tell from my choice of language that I don’t approve of such things. Control over ones own body is important and certainly an issue that the Trans community struggles with against those who think they know best.

The council are in a tight spot. If he was not being looked after full time by them, they would not have a duty of care towards him and it would not, from what I can see, be an issue. At least that means we don’t have to stop those other 249,999 people from also having sex. There is a separate problem that he’s unable to appreciate who it is and isn’t appropriate to approach for such things – it seems he’s not able to understand that children are off limits for example – but as he’s being closely supervised at the moment that doesn’t seem to be an immediate concern.

But they do have a duty of care and the court does conclude, rightly or wrongly, that he’s incapable of giving informed consent as he does not understand the risks or take appropriate precautions. (He was unable to demonstrate how to put a condom on a a fake penis) If he can’t give informed consent and the council permitted him to have sex while under their care, they’re possibly allowing an illegal act to take place.

They’re faced with the choice between violating what can be regarded as pretty basic rights or possibly allowing him to come to harm while in their care.

I think the judge came up with the right solution with the temporary restriction, merely because it may render a morally difficult question moot in teh longer term if the sex education is deemed successful. The psychological staff did not want to attempt this as they felt it unlikely to work and might just confuse and upset him. But a permanent ban could be seen as draconian and he’s expressed an interest in being allowed to have sexual relations again.

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The new police rules on searching anyone Trans, “Annex F”, that I wrote about at the weekend were up for discussion in parliament yesterday. LibDem MP Julian Huppert was kind enough to question the Minister about the topic, even though the minister did not mention Annex F at all in his opening statements.

The debate is online both in video format (The section on Annex F starts around 15:21) and in text format. (This link may become outdated as it’s the rapidly-prepared text version, I shall update it when the permanent version is available.

Here’s what Dr Huppert said on the topic, edited for length:

There is an assumption in the code that gender is binary, and that what must be done is to establish the person’s gender. However, there are a number of intersex conditions, for example, and people who would describe themselves as being somewhere between male and female, which is increasingly recognised in various bits of official documentation.
…
Surely we are not actually interested in establishing gender. As the police said last night, we are interested in establishing the gender of the officer who should search them; we do not actually care to categorise that person by gender. I am also interested in how much consultation there was on the measures with groups that represent people from the transgender community. I suspect, from the people to whom I have spoken, that there was little.
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To go through the details, annex F3 looks at gender recognition certificates. A person who possesses a gender recognition certificate must be treated as their acquired gender. That is very clear, but there is an issue, because the current training provided—certainly to the British Transport police and to the Metropolitan police—specifically states that a gender recognition certificate should not be asked for. … Under paragraph 3(c) of annex F, rather than asking them what preference they have and how they should be dealt with, it would be simpler to ask who should deal with them, which I think would be a better approach.
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Section 22 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004 makes it an offence to disclose information about gender recognition certificates, except in certain circumstances. There are cases of gender recognition certificates having been demanded inappropriately at various events; Pride was one example. I am worried that what is being said to police is that if they establish this, they should out the person with whom they are dealing to any other police officer who deals with them.
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Finally, paragraph 7 of annex F explains what should be done when a person has elected which gender they consider themselves to be, but is not treated as being of that gender. There is nothing that I can see in the rest of the code—perhaps the Minister can point it out to me—that says what should be done when someone whose gender is very clear is not treated as being of that gender. Why are we saying that it is all right not to treat somebody who is transgender as being of the gender that they use to describe themselves?
…
Having made a number of criticisms of annex F, I should say that I am quite pleased to see that there is an annex F and that the issue has been taken seriously. I just wish that the final outcome had been more perfect.

And it seems that his remarks went down well with other MPs, as Labour’s David Lammy in the subsequent speech stated:

I want to associate myself with the remarks made by the hon. Member for Cambridge. I took the Gender Recognition Act 2004 through Parliament and it was there that I came across the transgender community and learned about the sensitivity of the issue and the discrimination that this small minority group faces in broader society. I hope that the Minister will answer all the questions that have been raised.

Unfortunately, the questions were not answered by Nick Herbert, Conservative Minister for Policing. My guess is that this was due to not having the information and not expecting any questioning on the topic until rather shortly before the meeting rather than any true reluctance:

[Dr Huppert] asked a number of detailed questions on annex F, which is designed to provide additional guidance to the police service on the conduct of searches involving members of the public who appear to be transsexual or transvestite persons. We consulted various lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups.
…
My hon. Friend asked a number of other detailed questions, but I do not really have time to respond now. I am happy to write to him, but I hope that I can reassure him about how we have represented such a vulnerable section of the community.

I have a couple of issues with that. Mr Herbert states it is guidance on searches of people who appear to be Trans in some way. That’s not actually the title of the section, although it seems that about half way through the notes they change tack away from the “how to deal with someone of uncertain gender” towards “how to deal with trans people”. The former, more generalised approach seems more appropriate but the slip here may be revealing.

Secondly, they apparently consulted with “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender groups“. Regular readers of my witterings will know this sort of thing annoys me, because he’s saying that it’s likely they went to talk to some LGB organisation and the draft guidelines, which are near impossible to find, probably hadn’t seen a Trans person before this weekend. Dr Huppert described the paperwork as “not quite in the locked filing cabinet, and there was no sign on the door saying, Beware of the leopard, but it was tending in that direction” I hope he was merely giving a holding answer.

As far as I’m aware, the committee only had to look at and comment on the codes and had no power to approve or disapprove them, so there was never really any real chance of getting changes at this point. However, even if nothing comes of this particular exchange it’s cast some light on the issue and it should make ministers and officials increasingly aware of Trans issues, which is good in the long run.

The minister has promised to write to Dr Huppert with more details and if I’m able to get a copy of that response I shall be sure to pass it on.

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Late last year, the police told MPs that they thought 10 year olds should be allowed firearms licences for all types of firearm, not just shotguns. Despite growing up in rural England, I’m not a fan of this position and personally I would not let my nearly 10-year-old daughter even handle my air rifle unsupervised, let alone something like a shotgun or rifle.

In fact, doing so would be illegal – You can now be prosecuted if an under-18-year-old gains unauthorised access to your air rifle (18 seems a little old given you’ll be trusted with a fully automatic 5.56mm rifle if you join the Army at 17!) and it’s been illegal for some time for an under-14-year-old to handle an air rifle without supervison.

Watching the video of the proceedings at the time, it seemed that MPs also thought this was an odd police position and even governmental policy is heading towards restricting children accessing firearms.

My gut feeling looks to have been correct as Labour MP Thomas Docherty has introduced a Firearms Amendment Bill to impose a minimum age limit of 14 on shotguns. Here’s what he had to say on the matter in parliament when introducing the bill last week:

At present there is no minimum age for possessing a shotgun licence. This is at odds with the legislation covering other firearms, where there is a minimum age of 14. According to figures that I obtained from the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, the hon. Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire), almost 5,000 children in England and Wales possessed a licence to fire a shotgun. Of those 5,000 or so licences, 26 were issued to 10-year-olds, 72 to 11-year- olds, 134 to 12-year-olds and 231 to 13-year-olds.

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Within the last hour, the regional internet registry for the Asia Pacific region, APNIC, requested two more blocks of IP addresses. This will trigger the previously agreed-upon final distribution of IPv4 addresses to the regional registries.

Immediately, we will probably see very little technically from this although it will no doubt gain significant media coverage. Everything will keep working, despite some rather silly prophecies to the contrary. The regional registries will have enough space to keep on allocating IPv4 blocks to ISPs for a few months.

But the clock is very much ticking and any service providers not already working on IPv6 has merely been hitting the snooze button. End users are not going to notice for a while, perhaps not for years and if service providers get it right hopefully never. But providers that do not have IPv6 up and running by the time they run out of IPv4 address space are suddenly going to find themselves in a world of pain.

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I’ve just been pointed at the new Police and Criminal Act Code of Practice and the Home Office have (I think without consultation with the community but I’m trying to verify that) produced new rules on searching Trans folk. This isn’t in force yet and the document is still a “Final Draft”, but my understanding is that it’s probably too late to do much to change it. As it stands, they’ll probably come in to force later this year, although they did reach me via the political process so perhaps there is room to exert some influence.

Actually, the rules apply to anyone whose gender isn’t clear but it’s clearly been written with Trans people in mind. I predict problems when searching cis people who look “a bit odd”!

In one respect, the rules are possibly a good thing given that at the moment it would (I assume) be down to the officers discretion at the time. This is currently open to more opportunity for massive failure and prejudice than after these rules come into force.

The original document is available online and it’s Annex F on page 26 that’s Trans-related. To save you opening the PDF, I’ve reproduced it, slightly edited for brevity, at the end of this post.

My first reaction, and the reaction of a couple of other trans folk who have seen this, is that the GRC mention may be problematic. They do need to cover this as it’s important that if someone does have a GRC they must be treated as their acquired gender. However, I’m not a fan of the phrasing, which is just going to cause police to ask folk on the street for a copy of their GRC, as happened with the Toiletgate 2008 incident. I would suggest that gender markers on other official documents (which of course, people are not obliged to either carry or produce!) should be sufficient here.

It’s not awful – there are far worse things out there such as the prison service guidelines – but it’s a bit clunky and I’m really not sure what the objective of it was when writing it, so it’s hard to formulate a quick response beyond “Huh?”. There’s mention of “causing embarrassment” presumably to the officer doing the searching, so I do wonder if they’re concerned about the contents of someone’s underwear more than anything else. (Something that is of course unrelated to the gender specified on one’s ID)

Another point that came up was that it does assume a binary approach to gender which isn’t ideal, but the other sections upon which the code is based (“searches…may only be carried out by, or in the presence of, persons of the same sex“) mean that it would probably be futile trying to fix this here.

P.S. I’ve heard from elsewhere just as I post this that at least some police forces training on Trans issues is not to ask for a GRC – so PACE may now conflict with that.

ANNEX F ESTABLISHING GENDER OF PERSONS FOR THE PURPOSE OF SEARCHING
1. Certain provisions of this and other Codes explicitly state that searches and other procedures may only be carried out by, or in the presence of, persons of the same sex as the person subject to the search or other procedure.
2. All searches should be carried out with courtesy, consideration and respect for the person concerned. Police officers should show particular sensitivity when dealing with transsexual or transvestite persons. The following approach is designed to minimise embarrassment and secure the co-operation of the person subject to the search.
3. At law, the gender of an individual is their gender as registered at birth unless they possess a gender recognition certificate as issued under section 9 of the Gender Recognition Act 2004, in which case the person’s gender is the acquired gender.
(a) If there is no doubt as to the sex of a person, or there is no reason to suspect that the person is not the sex that they appear to be, they should be dealt with as that sex.
(b) A person who possesses a gender recognition certificate must be treated as their acquired gender.
(c) If the police are not satisfied that the person possesses a gender recognition certificate and there is doubt as to a person’s gender, the person should be asked what gender they consider themselves to be. If the person expresses a preference to be dealt with as a particular gender, they should be asked to sign the search record, the officer’s notebook or, if applicable, their custody record, to indicate and confirm their preference. If appropriate, the person should be treated as being that gender.
(d) If a person is unwilling to make such an election, efforts should be made to determine the predominant lifestyle of the person. For example, if they appear to live predominantly as a woman, they should be treated as such.
(e) If there is still doubt, the person should be dealt with according to the sex that they were born.
5. Once a decision has been made about which gender an individual is to be treated as, where possible before an officer searches that person, the officer should be advised of the doubt as to the person’s gender. This is important so as to maintain the dignity of the officer(s) concerned.

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As I sit here, from my nice safe desk in an anonymous building somewhere in Essex, I can see the internet. Not just Twitter, not Facebook, not any of a million other websites but the “routes” that tell service providers how to reach each other.

There’s a hole in those routes right now, where Egypt used to be. I can see one small bit, Noor Group, is still online but that’s it.

This isn’t good and neither is the violence but it’s not what I wanted to write about. I want to write about Vodafone.

There’s been criticism levelled at Vodafone for bowing to Egyptian government pressure in turning off the mobile phone network. I don’t believe they had any choice, not because of government political pressure but because otherwise they’d be asking their engineers to put their lives on the line.

Almost all networks are terribly, terribly vulnerable to anyone with enough internal knowledge. If you know physically where certain bits of equipment are (HLRs, if you’re into mobile phones) you can shut them down and bring the whole network down. There’s probably only a few locations – maybe only two, perhaps as many as a dozen or so – where these devices are held.

It only takes one engineer to tell the authorities where those locations are.

What then? Are you asking engineers to barricade themselves inside data centres until either the generators run out of fuel or the authorities break in? People have been beaten and shot there, so you’re asking the engineers to potentially martyr themselves just to buy a few days or even hours of mobile network coverage.

And if the engineers and managers and everyone else all refuse to say?

I have kids. Someone holds a gun to their head and I’m going to sing like a canary and I would tell them where those locations are and shut them down myself if necessary.

Sorry, but that’s the way it is. I expect no more of my colleagues in Egypt than I expect of myself.

I’m an engineer, not a martyr.

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This casting call for a new Sky Atlantic HD series, “Hit and Miss”, worries me. To summarise: They’re after someone to play the leading role, a trans woman, in a new TV series.

No problem?

Well, yes, they actually want “a male to female pre-op transsexual” to play the leading role. I’m confused.

Are they going to have a genital check at the casting to make sure someone is pre-op?

How will they actually know someone is transsexual?

Will anyone explain to them the difference between a noun and an adjective?

For the answer to these and other exiting questions, tune in next week…

Transamerica was successful in part I think because they didn’t try to get a trans woman or worse, a male actor to play the role. Instead, they just picked a good actress. Yes, I know Transamerica had problems, I winced at the “genuine girl” bit, but it shows you don’t need a trans woman to play a trans woman any more than you need to be heterosexual to play a straight person.

I can’t see that the pre-op stipulation matters unless they’re actually making transsexual pornography. (Oh boy, typing that is going to get me some serious comment spam…) Even in Transamerica, we saw Felicity’s “genitals” on screen.

There may be more to this than we know.

We only have the casting call to go on. Perhaps they are in fact looking around elsewhere too for cis women to play the leading role. But it’s still enough to make me concerned that they don’t really understand what they’re doing. And if they don’t, what are the chances that the final “huge and exciting British drama specially commissioned for [Sky Atlantic]” that will no doubt attract a significant amount of publicity will cater to all the usual harmful stereotypes?

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There are several things I like in today’s announcement on counter-terrorism.

The first two things we already had, but it’s been confirmed there is no intention to reintroduce them. Firstly, 28 day detention is out the window, down to 14 days as the previous legislation had a sunset clause in it that had lapsed. The government is drafting legislation to increase this to 28 days but not actually introducing it, basically reserving parliaments right to change it’s mind in future. (Which seems reasonable)

Secondly, section 44 stop-and-search powers were already gone as they were ruled a breach of Human Rights. (Although a photographer was stopped under these powers recently, apparently illegally. It’s being reworked but requires the consent of a “senior officer” where necessary, over a small geographic area and only for 14 days at a time.

Given that section 44 is effectively dead already, it seems trying to rework it so that it can be reintroduced is a backwards step. There doesn’t seem to be anything stopping the “senior officer” just renewing the consent every 14 days and there’s no change in the photography rules. “Guidelines” will be reworked, but that doesn’t stop front-line officers harassing photographers so I’m not convinced this will help. It depends on how tightly worded the new legislation is.

I’m cynical on this point because the review mentions “critical national infrastructure”. In my role as an ISP I’ve had various things inflicted upon me in the name of protecting this infrastructure and in general, they seem counterproductive.

Regulation of Investigatory Powers – Local government will need a magistrate to approve surveillance, interception or obtaining communications data. This is a big plus as although I haven’t seen any particularly hideous abuses to date, tapping lines and getting access to peoples email and phone records seems quite a major power for a city council who might just be investigating fly tipping.

The headline-grabber is control orders. It’s more liberal than the current system and as such should be recognised as a step in the right direction. But I don’t welcome it enthusiastically as it still mean there exists a system of punishing someone without even letting them know what they’ve done wrong, which I’m firmly against.

The recommendations seem like a reasonably light touch, sounding like a tough version of an ASBO – curfew, restrictions on going to some specified places, ban on overseas travel and restrictions on the use of the internet.

But it’s what isn’t in there that worries me. The restrictions on use of the internet effectively ban ownership of many electronic devices such as XBoxes, PS3s, iPhones etc and there are other “limited restrictions” on communication which could be anything. There’s also a maximum restriction of 2 years, unless someone does something again that indicates a possible terrorist connection which torpedos the whole point of putting a limit on it. Given that someone under a control order hasn’t been told what action they took made them subject to the order in the first case, how can they avoid doing it again?

And the home secretary only needs to “reasonably believe” – with no chance for anyone to present contrary evidence – that someone poses a threat. That’s a lower than the civil court when suing someone, “balance of probabilities” and it’s well short of the “beyond reasonable doubt” required to jail someone.

Better hope that you’re never in the wrong place at the wrong time. Someone might reasonably believe you’re a terrorist and you won’t even know why you’re suddenly subject to curfews and not allowed on the internet.

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An anonymous commenter just put the following on the Livejournal copy of my blog. I thought it was worth sharing and probably doesn’t need much comment…

Thank you for this post. There is, however, at least one psychiatrist, Dr Alan Sanderson, who argues that exorcism or “spirit release therapy” is “crying for funded research on the NHS” in cases of “gender dyphoria”.

The following “paper” is hosted on the website of the Royal College of Psychiatrists (PDF link) and it is some comfort that he found some resistance to performing NHS exorcisms.

The relevant case study, “Roger the Physician” shows how it isn’t just politicians who are clueless.

And here’s an extract from the case study:

An internationally known 41-year-old physician with severe gender dysphoria, Roger was already being prepared for surgical gender re-assignment. He came at the insistence of his wife, who had read Fiore’s book.

…Three years later, Roger’s orientation was fully heterosexual. His marriage was happier than for years…

Gender dysphoria is a condition of particular interest for the assessment of spirit release therapy, since there is no known curative treatment. Surgery is the only available treatment in severe cases. The situation cries out for funded research within the NHS.

The paper is from 2003 and cites a 1977 paper co-authored by Blanchard, titled Gender identity change in a transsexual: an exorcism. It’s cited in turn by two other papers, but it appears that NHS funding for this research was not forthcoming.

Edited to add: Zoe Brain points out that it’s not the same Blanchard as the Bailey-Blanchard-Lawrence one.