Police to record biological sex of all offenders, chief constable tells MSPs

Police Scotland is to record the biological sex of all offenders it deals with, Chief Constable Jo Farrell has told MSPs.

She said that since 2018, the force had ensured biological sex was recorded in cases involving rape and sexual offences – totalling more than 16,000 cases over the period.

Ms Farrell said following a decision in October the force is now seeking to ensure the biological sex of the offender will be recorded for all crimes.

She was speaking as she gave evidence to Holyrood’s Citizen Participation and Public Petitions Committee.

She appeared before MSPs after Kath Murray, Lucy Hunter Blackburn and Lisa Mackenzie – the founders of the policy body Murray Blackburn Mackenzie – lodged a petition at Holyrood calling for the police, the Crown Office and the Scottish Courts Service to all “accurately record the sex of people charged or convicted of rape or attempted rape”.

Ms Farrell told the committee: “If we look at our data in relation to the recording of men accused of rape and sexual offences, there have been 16,258 offences recorded on our crime system since 2018 and every one of those has been recorded accurately, that it is a biological man who is suspected of committing that offence.”

The chief constable made clear: ”Police Scotland supports the petition.

“A man who rapes or attempts to rape a woman, girl or other victim is, should be and will be recorded by Police Scotland as a male.”

While she told MSPs the force had been recording the biological sex of offenders in sexual crimes and rape cases since 2018, a decision had been taken last month to “expand that across all crimes”

Work is now under way on police systems to enable this to be done, she added.

Ms Farrell said: “You can imagine how many digital systems we have across policing, and over the years the use of male/female gender and sex has been conflated and confused.

“So we have worked through the detail of how those identifiers are described on the system and now we will progress with the work to ensure they are compliant and we are recording biological sex ,and there is an additional element where somebody can tell us if they want to identify as a transgender identity.”

The police chief accepted there had previously been “mixed messages” from the force in relation to the “complex area” of gender and identity.

She said she had “wanted to provide further clarity and direction in this area”, with Ms Farrell adding: “It was important for victims to hear from me as chief constable that there is no doubt in our practice – a man committing a rape will be recorded as a male.”

She made a “clear statement” on the issue at a meeting of the Scottish Police Authority last year, she said.

Ms Farrell told MSPs that by “recording accurately biological sex, we ensure that our crime data is accurate”.

But she also told the committee: “In terms of the treatment of that person while in our care, in custody, we would seek to engage with them in the identity they would want to be known.”

Meanwhile, Deputy Chief Constable Alan Speirs said October’s decision to record the biological sex of all persons entering police custody was “significant”.

He told how work is being done to ensure this change “progresses at pace”, saying the force “will implement changes to the key systems where we would record that data”.

Mr Speirs added that the Supreme Court judgment earlier this year, making clear a person’s sex relates to biological sex rather than any gender identity, “brings real clarity about the accuracy of what we would want to record”.