Police Scotland’s practice on self-ID does not comply with court ruling

MurrayBlackburnMackenzie’s petition to the Scottish Parliament’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee on accurately recording the sex of those accused or charged with rape, was covered in today’s Herald: “Police Scotland face backlash over gender ID policy“.

The article highlighted the letter Police Scotland recently submitted to the Committee reiterating its position that “the sex/gender identification of individuals who come into contact with the police will be based on how they present or how they self-declare”. Extraordinarily, in seeking to explain this, Police Scotland said that this practice promoted “a strong sense of belonging”.

Our response was quoted by the Herald: “We thought we were beyond being shocked and dismayed by the treatment of rape victims in the Scottish judicial system, but we never expected that Police Scotland would rate a rapist’s ‘strong sense of belonging’ above the law as set out in the Court of Session’s ruling last year, and above the impact of such a grotesque lie on women who have already suffered so much at the hands of an abuser.”

We have written to the members of the Committee: