‘I want the male and the female wings. I don’t want a special trans wing for people.’: Transgender people in custody in Scotland’s views about transgender specific facilities within prisons.

For a relatively small proportion of the wider prison population, transgender people in custody have been the focus of significant recent policy and media debate in Scotland and Internationally. This debate has taken a particular form following the opening of a wing of HMP Downview specifically to house transgender people in custody in England in March 2019. This unit is just one of the options for housing transgender people in English prisons — it is also possible that they are located in men’s or women’s prisons, based on individual risk assessment. Despite this focus, there have been no studies that have considered the views of transgender people in custody regarding HMP Downview and what this specific wing represents for the management of transgender people in custody. This constitutes a significant gap in what we know about transgender people’s views on how they want to be managed in custody, with reflections on HMP Downview facilitating insights into the views of a diverse, heterogeneous group of people in custody.