UK — . On October 23, 2021, The Daily Mail reported that the Home Secretary, Priti Patel, has ordered police forces to record the sex of criminals, not their gender identity at the time of the crime.
According to the Daily Mail, “Home Office officials are working with police forces on a new procedure for officers to record the sex of criminals to ensure crime statistics are ‘more accurate’”. A number of concerned citizens and advocacy groups have been stressing the importance of having accurate data on sex. Recently in a submission to the Scottish Parliament, Professor Alice Sullivan highlighted how “small numbers of misallocated cases can have a large effect on research findings in any sub-group analysis where one sex is dominant”, using sexual offences as an example.
Clare Dimyon has also been undertaking detailed analyses of prison population data for England and Wales, using sentenced offender data provided by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ). Her analyses reveal that virtually all sexual offenders are male, while the vast majority of those offended against are female. Further, at least 79% of those defined as ‘transgender’ prisoners by the MOJ are male, and their criminality conforms to the male measure of criminality (96% of all prisoners are male).
The Home Office’s change in direction follows Ms Dimyon’s petition to the UK Government and Parliament, requesting that the law “require that all authorities throughout criminal justice system (police, courts, prisons & probation) record the biological sex of all individuals investigated, charged, convicted, imprisoned for the offence types i) VATP & ii) “sexual offences” including rape & attempted rape”. At the time of this writing, her petition had received over 12,000 signatures.
Source: UK Police Ordered to Stop Recording Male Offenders in Female Crime Statistics – Women Are Human