8 Biological Males Were Housed in Women’s Prisons Last Year: Correctional Service

A correctional officer enters the gate at Millhaven Institution in Bath, Ontario, on Oct. 17, 2018. (The Canadian Press/Lars Hagberg)

Amid political debate about transgender issues and whether biological males should be allowed to enter women’s washrooms, the federal corrections agency says that eight males were held in female institutions last year.

The Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) revealed the data to The Epoch Times Feb. 26, but it withheld information on the offences and sentences of the inmates, citing privacy reasons.

“Eight male offenders (with accommodation related to gender diversity) were housed in women’s institutions” at the end of fiscal year 2022-2023, a CSC spokesperson said in a statement.

“The accommodation of an offender in an institution that better aligns with their gender identity is CSC’s default position, unless there are overriding health and safety concerns that cannot be otherwise mitigated.”

The placing of biological males in female institutions started after the Liberal government’s Bill C-16 became law in 2017. The piece of legislation amended the Canadian Human Rights Act to add gender identity and expression as prohibited grounds of discrimination.

A little more than one-third of Conservative MPs at the time had voted in favour of the bill during second reading in the House of Commons. It was the only House vote taken on the bill which was later adopted during a majority Liberal Parliament.

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Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poilievre did not cast a vote on the bill, according to House records.

Mr. Poilievre, however, waded into the gender identity debate last week.

During a press conference on unrelated topics, he was asked by media whether he would “make female spaces safe again” by passing law to ban transgender women from participating in female sports or gaining access to female shelters and prisons.

“Female spaces should be exclusively for females, not for biological males,” responded the Tory leader.

“You asked if I would introduce legislation on that. A lot of the spaces you described are provincially and municipally controlled, so it is unclear [...] what reach federal legislation would have on them,” he added.

“But obviously, female sports, female change rooms, female bathrooms should be for females, not for biological males,” he said, without mentioning federal prisons.

While Mr. Poilievre does not typically initiate discussions on those matters, they have broad support within his party.

At the latest convention in September, 87 percent of party delegates supported a policy proposal stating that “women are entitled to the safety, dignity, and privacy of single-sex spaces (e.g., prisons, shelters, locker rooms, washrooms) and the benefits of women-only categories (e.g., sports, awards, grants, scholarships).”

There is also nearly 80 percent support amongst Canadians for maintaining a separation of men in women in prisons, according to a MacDonald-Laurier Institute poll released last year.

‘Individualized Protocol’

The Correctional Service uses a gender-related accommodation plan called an “Individualized Protocol” to manage offenders with a gender identity different than their biological sex. The agency says it does not track the specific identities of inmates, but only those who have the special protocol.

Based on the number of Individualized Protocols, there are fewer than 1 percent of inmates who identify as gender diverse, the CSC says. The agency was overseeing 21,384 inmates during fiscal year 2022-2023, according to its departmental report.

The agency says it works with offenders seeking accommodation to place them in an institution which “better aligns with the offender’s gender identity,” regardless of their sex.

CSC says the requests are assessed on a case-by-case basis and includes a “robust assessment of offenders’ needs and risks, as well as any overriding health and safety concerns including the examination of mitigation strategies.”

The Correctional Service conducted studies on that population in recent years and a 2022 study found that 33 gender-diverse inmates had a history of sexual offences.

The vast majority (82 percent) were men who identified as women, 64 percent of which had committed a current sexual offence. Eighty-eight percent had a prior conviction for a sex offence. CSC research adds that 94 percent of these offenders had committed the offence while living as their biological sex. Over half of the victims were children (58 percent) or women (55 percent).

CSC adds that “a majority of this sub-group caused death or serious harm to their victim(s).”

“Due to these factors, gender diverse offenders with sex offence histories present unique operational considerations for institutional placement and correctional programming.”

Some cases of biological males who committed murder and/or sexual assault and that were sent to female institutions have been publicized in recent years.

The Epoch Times asked CSC whether biological males have been implicated in incidents such as sexual assault while in female institutions. The agency said the information is “not readily available.”