The transfer policy is hopelessly naive about the motives of males who identify as women, Mason says. Those who committed child-abuse or rape are often shunned and mistreated in men’s prisons. Some see identifying as a woman as their way out. Transfers to women’s prisons are therefore skewed towards precisely those males who are most dangerous to women and children – the latter being particularly concerning because several women’s prisons in Canada have low-security, homelike sections where mothers can care for young children.
