JK Rowling Slams the Housing of Trans-Identified Males in Female Prisons

J.K. Rowling, author of the "Harry Potter" series, lights the Empire State Building to mark the launch of her nonprofit children's organization, Lumos, in New York City on April 9, 2015. Evan Agostini/Invision/AP

British author J.K. Rowling—famed for her critically-acclaimed “Harry Potter” book series—has opined against the housing of male prisoners who identify as women in female prisons, specifically those who have been imprisoned for sex-related offenses.

Ms. Rowling shared her views in a series of posts on X.

The author lambasted the “trans activist outrage” that arises whenever she publicly shares her opinion that “jailed women shouldn’t be used as validation tools or emotional support props for trans-identified male sex offenders.”

“Such activists can’t bring themselves to concede that a man who was convicted of harming women/girls ought not to be incarcerated with the demographic to whom he is a proven danger,” she wrote.

Ms. Rowling also denounced the “stock arguments” of such activists, including the notion that “no sexual predator would bother to pretend to be trans” or that “no trans woman has ever harmed a woman in a women’s only space.”

“If they admit that even a single man isn’t a woman because he says he is, the entire edifice of gender identity ideology crumbles,” she stated.

Ms. Rowling ended her Feb. 20 post by addressing those who support putting “violent and sexually predatory men into women’s prisons.” She said anyone who backs this policy is “knowingly forcing those women to live in fear of, and, in some proven cases, to suffer abuse that many of them will have endured pre-incarceration.”

She continued: “Women have the basic human right not to suffer cruel and unusual punishment.”

Trans-Identified Males in Women’s Prisons

In a subsequent Feb. 25 post, Ms. Rowling referenced an article published by The Telegraph, citing a statistic that more than 70 percent of transgender prisoners held in British jails are imprisoned for sex offenses or violent crimes, such as rape and robbery.

In total, there are currently 244 transgender male and female inmates in British jails. Five male inmates who identify as female are being held in female prisons, while 144 male inmates who identify as female are being kept in male prisons.

As of 2020, the vast majority of male prisoners who identify as women in the United States are housed in male prisons, according to NBC News. The publication reported that only 15 of the 4,890 transgender inmates imprisoned across the country were being held in prisons that did not match their biological sex.

The risks of assimilating biological men into women’s prisons have been widely reported.

In July 2022, a biological male inmate was removed from the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility for Women in New Jersey after impregnating two of the female inmates being housed in the facility.

One year before the biological male inmate’s removal from the all-female prison, the state passed a policy ordering transgender people to be housed according to their perceived gender instead of their biological sex. The policy was born from a settlement reached with the American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which sued the New Jersey Department of Corrections in 2019 on behalf of a transgender inmate.

“Anyone incarcerated under NJDOC care may at any time provide information regarding their gender identity to the NJDOC,” Chris Carden, the New Jersey Department of Corrections’ deputy director of public information, told NBC News at the time.

“The Department then takes careful measures to ensure they are properly housed in-line with their gender identity and their housing preferences, while ensuring both their safety and the security of the institution,” he continued. “Overall, the steps being taken support the important cultural changes being made throughout the Department.”

Transgender Inmate Laws

Other states and jurisdictions in the United States have allowed transgender inmates to be housed in opposite-sex prisons, including Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York City, and California, The Associated Press reported.

In September 2020, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law allowing transgender prisoners—as well as nonbinary inmates, those who don’t identify as either male or female, and intersex inmates, those who are born with both male and female biological traits—to request housing that is not based on their biological sex.

The law took effect on Jan. 1, 2021.

According to the John Locke Foundation, a North Carolina-based conservative think tank, California has spent over $4 million of taxpayer funds on “gender confirmation” procedures, such as vaginoplasties and laser hair removal, for prisoners from 2017 to mid-2023. The funds went toward procedures and treatments for 157 inmates, four of whom were awaiting execution on death row.