Woman Wrongly Sent to Men’s Prison for Having ‘Masculine Features’

A probe is underway after a woman spent the night in a maximum-security prison in Scotland when police kept her there for having supposedly “masculine features.” Police Scotland told The Independent it was investigating how the woman—who a spokesperson said was taken into custody with “incomplete information about their gender”—was remanded in HMP Perth instead of the country’s women’s prison after she appeared in court on Oct. 21. “We are reviewing our custody procedure to ensure this does not happen again,” the spokesperson added. “This is a complete embarrassment for everyone involved,” a source told The Telegraph. “Taking a female to a male prison and leaving her there is a shocker.” The paper reported that, even after authorities discovered they had brought the woman to the wrong facility, she was forced to stay overnight in the men’s prison because it was too late to facilitate a transfer. She was kept in segregation before being moved the next day. “An assumption was made, based on someone’s appearance and not much else,” the source told The Telegraph.