Willy Maley

I have written to the Judicial Office for Scotland in relation to errors in the interpretation of evidence in the Sandie Peggie case. To: Judicial Office for Scotland [email protected] Dear Sir/Madam, I write in relation to the Judgment in the case of Peggie vs Fife Health Board and Upton. While some of these points have already been discussed in the public domain, the judgment suggests a preference for a ‘skilled witness’ regarding research evidence. As a professor of sociology at UCL with many years of experience in the field of social statistics, I trust that I meet the criteria to be considered as a skilled witness. Paragraph 1047 suggests some confusion on the part of Judge Kemp regarding the following publication: Dhejne, C., Lichtenstein, P., Boman, M., Johansson, A.L., Långström, N. and Landén, M., 2011. Long-term follow-up of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery: cohort study in Sweden. PloS one, 6(2), p.e16885. The judgment notes: ‘The following was stated “Transsexual individuals were at increased risk of being convicted for any crime or violent crime after sex reassignment (Table 2); this, however was only significant in the group who underwent sex reassignment before 1989.” ‘ However, this is sentence is irrelevant to the point at hand. The judge appears to have either misinterpreted the evidence or missed the point. The paper states ‘regarding any crime, male-to-females had a significantly increased risk for crime compared to female controls (aHR 6.6;95% CI 4.1–10.8) but not compared to males’. In other words, the paper finds that ‘male-to-females’ retained a male pattern of criminal convictions. The judge’s misinterpretation of Dhjene et al, combined with his dismissal of Ministry of Justice data on the grounds that clicking on hyperlinks would have been required to gain access to the relevant documents, underpinned his conclusion in paragraph 1049 ‘In our view, having read all of the documents, there is very far from sufficient reliable evidence to establish as a fact that a trans woman who is legally and biologically male is a greater risk to any person assigned female at birth within a changing room environment at a workplace than another woman assigned female at birth’. This conclusion is based in error. In addition, it misunderstands the burden of proof. It is well-established that males are far more likely to commit violent and sexual crime than females. In order to argue that this does not apply to a subset of males, one would need strong positive evidence of this point. I would add some further evidence. The most recent data from His Majesty’s Prison and Probation Service (HMPPS, 2025) further supports the view that males who identify as transwomen retain a male pattern of offending. Only around 4% of the prison population in England and Wales is female. The transgender prison population in 2025 (0.4% of prisoners) included over four times as many biological males (276) as females (63). If transwomen were counted as women, they would constitute 7.3% of women prisoners. I hope this is helpful. Yours faithfully, Professor Alice Sullivan, UCL