By Mia Hughes and Peter Copeland, December 9, 2024
Gender self-ID policies in the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) are once again under scrutiny after the Québec trial of a father accused of murdering his wife and two young children. Mohamad Al Ballouz, who began identifying as a woman after being arrested, stands accused of stabbing Synthia Bussières no fewer than 23 times before allegedly drowning the couple’s two sons, five-year-old Eliam and two-year-old Zac.
Ballouz, who is being housed in Leclerc detention facility for women, now goes by the name of Levana. This is another case of a new phenomenon that has been dubbed “prison-onset gender dysphoria.” This suspicious form of supposed deep-seated discomfort with one’s sexed body that coincidentally “emerges” in males convicted of or awaiting trial for serious crimes with lengthy prison sentences.
This phenomenon may be on the rise in nations that have adopted gender self-ID policies in their correctional systems. The origins of “prison-onset gender dysphoria” in Canada trace back to a January 2017 town hall event in Kingston, Ontario, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, in an impromptu response to an audience question, committed to segregating federal inmates based on self-declared gender identity rather than biological sex.
This spontaneous pledge led to the Correctional Service Canada (CSC) Interim Policy Bulletin 584, since superseded by Policy Bulletin 685. The policy allows trans-identified inmates to be housed according to their self-declared gender identity, “regardless of their anatomy,” unless overriding health or safety concerns arise that cannot be resolved.
Incarcerated women in Canada felt the effect of Trudeau’s off-the-cuff decision almost immediately. A 2022 CSC study revealed that between 2017 and 2022, 20 male inmates identifying as transgender were housed in federal women’s prisons, representing one-third of the total trans-identified male inmate population during that time.
The CSC study also showed that most transgender- and gender-diverse prisoners in Canada are male and serving long sentences, with 90% serving sentences for violent offenses, including sexual offenses and homicide. In a Macdonald-Laurier Institute report on gender identity and patterns of offending in Canada, criminology professor Jo Phoenix notes that nearly all those included in the study with a history of sexual offenses committed them before identifying as trans or non-binary.
There are several reasons why a convicted male criminal might exploit a policy allowing self-identification into the female prison system. Such a move could provide an easier time in custody, access to sexual partners, or, in the case of sex offenders, access to potential victims. According to retired CSC officer April Kitzul, sex offenders are also “the most despised inmates,” making a transfer to a women’s facility an appealing way to avoid harassment from other inmates.
Those males who do succeed in their transfer bid find themselves housed alongside some of the most vulnerable women in Canadian society, whose lives are marked by poverty, marginalization, and disproportionately high rates of domestic violence and sexual assault. Gender self-ID policies mean that an already extremely vulnerable group of women must endure being locked up with individuals such as Ballouz, who is accused of triple homicide, or Tara DeSousa, Canada’s youngest convicted sex offender who at the age of 15 raped a three-month-old baby leaving the infant in need of emergency corrective surgery.
DeSousa began identifying as a woman after conviction and is now housed at the Fraser Valley Institute for Women, a facility with a mother-and-baby unit. Reports from the women inside Fraser Valley describe DeSousa lurking near the mother-and-baby unit making sexual and inappropriate comments to the women using the facility.
In 2022, incarcerated women in Canada were given a rare opportunity to share their experiences of being caged with male criminals. Through a series of letters, they described repeated incidents of sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. One woman told of being constantly on edge, saying women could no longer do simple things, such as walking from the shower in a towel. “You just feel more self-conscious and you overthink your movements,” she explained.
Predictably, such policies do not enjoy the support of the average Canadian. Polling conducted by MLI in 2023 revealed that just over 70% of Canadians opposed male criminals being housed in women’s prisons. For most people, the very idea that murderers, serial rapists, pedophiles, and even a necrophiliac could self-identify as women after being convicted of their heinous crimes and be housed in women’s prisons beggars belief. However, when a nation jettisons reality and allows public policy to be guided by an incoherent belief system such as gender ideology, anything is possible.
According to Canada’s Department of Justice, the definition of woman is “all people who identify as women.” This definition is, quite simply, absurd. A woman is an adult human female—a fact even the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) tacitly acknowledges. Only one-third of trans-identified male inmates are housed in women’s prisons, while the other two-thirds remain in men’s facilities. This clearly indicates that CSC recognizes these individuals as men, regardless of their self-declared female identity. After all, there is no scenario in which an actual woman would ever be placed in a men’s prison. Inmate safety is already a key factor in classification and housing decisions. Trans-identifying inmates, like other vulnerable groups, can be protected by being placed in smaller or more isolated units with others of the same sex whose characteristics pose a lower risk of harm.
While there is little hope that the Trudeau government will ever take the privacy and dignity of female inmates into consideration, there is a potential Conservative government on Canada’s horizon. As MLI founder Brian Crowley has noted, addressing the fallout from Trudeau’s gender self-ID policies in prisons would only require revoking misguided policies and implementing ones that safeguard the rights of female inmates. No legislative changes needed.
The preposterous phenomenon of “prison-onset gender dysphoria” – and the fact that it is being treated seriously – underscores the absurdity of self-ID policies and highlights the need for far bolder leadership to address the wider issue. It is merely a small symptom of the much larger problem posed by gender ideology. If Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre finds himself at the helm and tasked with undoing the damage caused by years of Liberal acquiescence to gender extremists, he must take a decisive stand in defense of reality. That stand should begin by firmly reinstating the definition of a woman as an adult human female.
Mia Hughes specializes in paediatric gender medicine, psychiatric epidemics, social contagion, and the intersection of trans rights with women’s rights. She is the author of The WPATH Files and a Senior Fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
Peter Copeland is the deputy director of Domestic Policy at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.
