UK police forces are “aware of 67 recognised genders” and are allowing suspects to record themselves as non-binary, according to a report in The Sunday Telegraph.
A total of seven police forces across England and Wales are now allowing criminals to be recorded on their system as the opposite sex or as non-binary, meaning that they do not consider themselves male or female.
In Norfolk and Suffolk, two other forces permit criminal suspects to describe their gender on official documents as “unknown and unspecified” as officers are “aware there are a growing number of terms associated with gender and sexuality”.
A spokesman for the police forces confirmed that they recognise there are a total of 67 different genders people can identify as. The move has prompted outrage, with lawmakers and criminal experts among those to voice concerns that the policy “corrupts data”, especially in the case of a male criminal identify as a woman, ‘non-binary’, or as ‘unknown and unspecified’ with regards to their sex.
Criminologists and lawmakers alike require accurate data in order to produce assessments on law enforcement policies in the UK. But the inaccurate data provided by criminal suspects, who can now identify as any out of 67 preferences, corrupts the information gathering process, leaving the data unreliable.
Surrey Police and Crime Commissioner, Lisa Townsend, criticised the approach as ‘ludicrous’. She stated:
“If police stop someone going 90mph in a 50mph zone, but they only identify as going at 47mph, we would find that laughable. So to not collect accurate data about someone’s sex — not their gender — is ludicrous.
“We are in danger of going into a scenario where, rather than policing for the victim and the public, we are policing for the potential criminal.”
It comes as it emerged that U.K. police are now calling transgender rape suspects by their “preferred pronoun” — with self-declaration of ‘gender identity’ rather than biological sex being adopted by key criminal justice institutions.
According to a new report by think tank, Policy Exchange, women are being let down by the criminal justice system because it prioritises transgender rights. The report also warned that those who speak out against such treatment face “McCarthyite” backlash.
The policy has been adopted despite the fact it was not aligned with U.K. law. The report said that the policy of self-declaration includes circumstances in which suspects may be referred to by the police and the courts using their preferred pronoun.
The report said this meant that a male rape suspect could be referred to as a “she” even though a rape victim suffered a penetrative assault. The police approach also meant that detained female suspects could be searched by male officers who self-declared themselves as women.
In Ireland, Minister for Justice Helen McEntee has faced continued criticism after she confirmed that it is the position of the Department of Justice that biological males can be placed into female prisons if they say they identify as a woman.
Women’s rights groups have raised serious concerns about the safety of female prisoners after a change in the law allowed biological male criminals who said they identified as female to be placed with women in prisons.
Under the Gender Recognition Act of 2015 anyone in Ireland over the age of 18 has the right to legally change their sex by applying for a Gender Recognition Certificate. All that is required is a declaration that the person wishes to live as a particular gender, and the person does not have to have taken hormones or undergone gender reassignment surgery, or have the application overseen by a doctor.
The police forces’ policy on gender is similar to that of the UK’s Civil Service, which recognises over 100 different genders, according to Whitehall sources who spoke to The Telegraph.
“This came as quite a surprise to me as I’d always thought there was only two biological sexes.”
The investigation also revealed how deliberately ‘misgendering’ another person could result in disciplinary action, according to HR guidelines from the Department of Health and Social Care.
Misgendering another person was defined in the document as “using a word, such as a pronoun or form of address, which does not correctly reflect an individual’s gender identity”. It added that if a case of “misgendering” is accidental or a one-off occurrence, the manager “generally wouldn’t need to intervene”, but that “deliberate, continued and/or repeated incidents are unacceptable and should be dealt with” in the same manner as bullying or harassment.
The Telegraph investigation also mentioned an email sent from a “non binary” trade representative based in China, sent to fellow Department for International Trade (DIT) civil servants. The email asked them to “put your preferred pronouns in your email signature” and not to use gendered language such as “his”, “ladies and gentlemen” or mother and father.
Alternatively, officials were urged to use “the singular ‘their’”, “everyone” and “parents” respectively. The email was sent to all DIT staff in July 2020.