MailOnline learned that female prison guards must strip trans prisoners of the first half before male colleagues checked their lower area.
In a strange procedural ruling, prison guards are doubling when searching transgender inmates leaving prison for hospital appointments or court appearances.
Trans-gender offenders shrouded in HMP Dovegate reported using two female guards to check the upper half of their bodies while two male colleagues checked under the belt.
The prisoners who were searched said they felt “humiliated and violated” by the male officials, which “shattered” their confidence.
But women’s rights activists lashed out this morning and accused the Department of Justice (MOJ) of violating the “human rights” of female officials.
Kellie-Jay Keen, a gender-focused activist, insists that the government should not “spent any resources” to promote humiliating “trans prisoners.”
She added in a speech to MailOnline: “I don’t think these female officials should be searched and I wonder if this violates the human rights of female prison officials and whether their employers are breaking the law.”
A Dovegate prisoner revealed news about the search in Prison Magazine, a Class B male facility in Staktordshire, which has 1,160 prisoners.
Cross-criminals’ claims about searches are hit by HMP Dovegate (pictured)
Trans-gender prisoners claim they feel “humiliated” due to treatment (file image)
Cushy Lock-Up’s prisoners benefit from yoga and chess in the Kok Valley, choirs, and land where vegetables and flowers are grown.
The prison, the only privately operated specially built treatment facility in the UK, has also been ridiculed in the past for using “treatment ducks” to help reform criminals.
Write to Internal time Regarding what they call treatment, the trans-prisoner said: “The policy is that when we go to jail or leave the prison to go to court, hospital appointments, etc., the upper half of our body is searched by two female officers, and then they will leave us to dress. Then two male officers search for the lower half of our body.
“I have experienced countless searches of disrespect and total humiliation. The negative impact they had on my mental health was incredible.
“I feel humiliated, violated, and every time my confidence is broken. Most, if not all, trans people are self-aware of their bodies, thus forcing us to reveal that our post-or-medium-term bodies are inhuman and traumatic.
“A lot of trans people who go in and out of prison may be the same searches I have for these, so let’s do something about it.”
Prisoners requested an X-ray scanner to search the trans-inmates and said they had written to Attorney General Shabana Mahmood.
“The X-ray machine can be said to be more thorough than doing striptease, which makes it less trauma for trans women in prison,” they said, adding, “It will make us feel the trouble of having to get naked from the waist from the front of two male officers.”
Kellie-Jay Keen (pictured) is a gender-focused activist who insists that the government should not “spent any resources” to “promote humiliated” trans prisoners
The prison is run by Serco, a government security contractor.
Insiders claim that transgender and search policies are both national issues and are not set by Serco.
“Body scanners are another search method that cannot replace prisoner searches,” the HMP Dovegate source added.
“HMP Dovegate staff, while aware of security considerations, recognized the sensitivity of the situation, and, according to policy, prisoners were informed of the need to conduct a search and participated in the decision-making process on the gender of the officers who completed the search personnel.”
Judicial sources said the jail checks were conducted based on the national “search policy framework” and “individual care and management of trans policy frameworks.”
MailOnline is reviewing these policies after understanding last month’s Supreme Court ruling on transgender people.
In landmark legal decisions with far-reaching consequences, the UK’s top judge ruled that the definition of women was based on biology.
MailOnline approaches Moj to comment.
