Transgender criminals should be given taxpayer-funded wigs and underwear to help them on their “journey”, Scotland’s prisons watchdog has said.
HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland (HMIPS) said a “central repository” should be provided where “difficult to source items” can be requested for trans inmates.
Tess White, their shadow equalities minister, questioned why public funds should be used to provide items such as wigs when Scotland’s jails were facing a staffing and overcrowding “crisis”.
It emerged last year that the serial rapist David Smith, who is housed in Barlinnie, is determined to have surgery to become female and wants to be called Attila Taylor.
The report also argued that the jail’s leadership should appoint equality and diversity “ambassadors from the prisoner population”. There were 16 trans criminals in Scotland’s jails at the end of January this year.