Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many biologically male transgender prisoners housed in the male estate have been subjected to assault and to sexual assault in each of the last five years.

These figures have been drawn from the HMPPS Incident Reporting System, which records the legal gender of prisoners. They are based on snapshot data collections from March 2018, 2019 and 2021. There was no collection in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Data is not available for 2017. This is because legal gender did not form part of the central data collection in that year.

In 2017-18 there were 38 assaults and 14 sexual assaults on legally male transgender prisoners in the men’s prison estate. In 2018-19 there were 16 assaults and fewer than 5 sexual assaults. In 2020-21 there were fewer than 5 assaults and fewer than 5 sexual assaults.

In 2017-18 there were 332 self-harm incidents involving legally male transgender prisoners in the men’s prison estate. In 2018-19 there were 159. In 2020-21 there were 228. Data on attempted suicide is not available.

We have trained more than 25,000 staff in suicide and self-harm prevention as part of our drive to tackle these issues, and we continue to develop initiatives to better support people in custody.