Transfers of trans prisoners in Canada have fallen. An upcoming case will test gender policies 

A trans prisoner was convicted of assaulting a 12-year-old girl and two women in 1998. Amanda Joy Cooper was living as a biological male at the time of the crimes.

Cooper grabbed the girl while she was rollerskating in a parking lot, and told her, “I’ll rape you,” according to Quebec court documents. Days later, Cooper attacked a young woman at the same location. Two days after that, Cooper assaulted a 19-year-old woman at a bus shelter.

Prior to those incidents, Cooper had been convicted of sexual assault multiple times. While in federal custody for the first time in 1986, Cooper sexually touched female prison staff and sexually assaulted a female parole officer. Cooper was designated a dangerous offender in 2001.

Cooper now identifies as a woman and, while in prison, had gender-affirming surgery, described by the Canadian Society of Plastic Surgeons as surgery to help a person “physically actualize their internal sense of self.”

Cooper wants to be transferred from Millhaven Institution, a maximum-security prison for men west of Kingston, Ont., to the Fraser Valley Institution for Women in British Columbia.

Cooper’s case, which will be reviewed by a federal court judge on June 15, is part of a growing debate over how to handle inmates who request prison placement based on gender identity, rather than anatomy.

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The debate pits the wishes of transgender women to be in an institution that matches their gender identity with the concerns of other women in those institutions over their own safety and privacy.

The issue stems from a policy change by Correctional Services Canada (CSC) in 2017 to align with federal legislation prohibiting discrimination based on gender identity. Nearly a decade later, transfer requests made by transgender women are being increasingly rejected, an Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) investigation has found.

While the rate of transfer approvals reached 80 per cent in the first few years following the 2017 policy, it has since fallen to 23 per cent, according to data obtained by the IJB. In 2018-19, for instance, 10 individuals applied; eight requests were approved. In 2024-25, 13 people applied; three requests were approved (the rest were either rejected or withdrawn). The number of individuals making requests has numbered between eight and 15 annually, according to a breakdown from CSC.

“I think this speaks to the question of the policy on paper versus the policy in reality,” said Nicole Kief, executive director of Prisoners’ Legal Services, based in British Columbia.

“Women who are trans or Two Spirit or gender non-conforming in another way, who feel that an institution for women best aligns with their gender, are being prevented from having that placement.”

Heather Mason, a non-trans woman, was in and out of prison for drug-related offences between 2014 and 2018. The former inmate told the IJB that while she was incarcerated, a sex offender — a trans woman — saw her naked while she was being strip searched. Mason screamed and grabbed her shirt, trying to cover her body. She said the offender was pulled away by a guard.

“I felt very violated, and I also felt that it’s the duty of the correctional system to provide safety for us, because we are locked in an institution where we cannot leave and we have no recourse to protect ourselves.”

She said that incident occurred in March 2015 at South West Detention Centre, a provincial facility in Windsor, Ont., not under CSC’s jurisdiction. Only months earlier, the province said prison placement would be based on “self-identified gender or housing preference.”

Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General did not respond to a request for comment.

In an unattributed statement, CSC said it recognizes that the placement of gender-diverse offenders in its institutions “is a complex and evolving area of operations” and it “continues to adapt its practices and respond to emerging issues.” CSC falls under the ambit of the federal minister of Public Safety (currently Gary Anandasangaree).

Each transfer request is “assessed on a case-by-case basis,” says the statement. The agency added that it considers risks to other offenders and staff “particularly in relation to a history of gender-based violence or sexual violence,” and “risks to the offender’s personal safety.”

From 2017 to 2025, 57 trans women made 129 requests to transfer to a women’s prison and 35 requests were approved. More than 70 requests were denied by CSC in that period. (An offender can make more than one request, resulting in several decisions over the course of their incarceration, CSC said. If the application is denied, another can be submitted within six months, or sooner depending on the circumstances.)

There were 90 transgender women in federal prison as of October 2025, according to CSC data, 73 of them housed in men’s prisons and 17 in women’s prisons. Of the 17, eight have had gender-affirming surgery.

The list of offences committed by those 17 transgender women include murder in the first and second degree, assault with a weapon, manslaughter, arson, forcible confinement, sexual interference of minors and printing or publishing child pornography, CSC said. Two of the 17 trans women are dangerous offenders, which means they were convicted of a serious violent or sexual crime and may pose a threat to others.

A 2022 study by CSC found trans women made up 80 per cent of gender-diverse offenders with sexual offence histories. The majority of offences happened while the offenders were “living as their biological sex” and most victims were women and children.

Most female offenders are accused of nonviolent crimes, with property crimes making up the largest proportion, followed by drug offences, according to a 2019 Statistics Canada report.

CSC said it has not seen “an increased risk level to offenders” when a gender-diverse person is placed in an institution that better aligns with their identity.

Stacey Love-Jolicoeur, a trans woman and advocate, has visited 35 Canadian prisons to meet with incarcerated trans people since 2012.

“They’re still human beings, that’s the bottom line,” said Love-Jolicoeur, who is familiar with Cooper’s case. The reason Cooper should be in a women’s prison is “pretty simple,” she says. “Amanda is a post-op trans woman with no male anatomy.”

According to court documents, Cooper said she “has been harassed, bullied, threatened, and assaulted by other inmates because of her gender identity” while in the men’s prison.

A previous transfer request was denied by CSC due to “overriding safety concerns” including concerns that Cooper’s transfer would “jeopardize the health and safety of the inmate population and staff,” court documents show.

A lawyer for Cooper declined comment. CSC would not comment on Cooper’s case, saying it is before the courts.

At least one trans woman has been removed from a federal women’s prison after being transferred, the IJB found.

Michelle Autumn, a trans woman, started a life sentence in 2007 for first-degree murder. The offence involved luring a 13-year-old Edmonton girl to a golf course, where she was sexually assaulted and killed by a group that included Autumn, court documents show. The crime was committed when Autumn was 17 and living as a man.

Autumn was transferred to Grand Valley Institution for Women on March 6, 2025, according to court documents. During a strip search, Autumn exhibited “highly inappropriate behaviour,” including playing with her genitalia “in a sexually suggestive manner.”

When staff decided to move Autumn to a single occupancy cell, she barricaded herself in a common room and tried to use a broken television remote as a weapon, court documents say. The incident ended when a chemical irritant grenade was deployed.

Autumn was transferred back to a men’s prison on March 10, 2025, and did not respond to a request for comment.

“CSC has the authority to transfer an offender to a more suitable institution at any point, if deemed necessary,” the agency said in its statement. CSC said involuntary transfer decisions “are not automatic and are not based on gender identity.”

Mason, the former prisoner, insists women are being silenced about their experiences in prison.

“It’s not transphobic to speak about reality, and women deserve to be protected. And it’s also not transphobic to say, ‘Hey, this isn’t working.’ You have two groups of people who have competing rights here, and it’s women that are being harmed.”

Fallon Aubee was Canada’s first trans woman to be transferred to a federal women’s prison after spending more than 15 years at various men’s facilities. In 2017, she was moved to B.C.’s Fraser Valley Institution, where she completed her first-degree murder sentence. She was released on day parole in 2023 after serving 22 years.

Before her conviction, Aubee was privately exploring her feminine side while publicly presenting as male, she said. Being in prison forced her to reflect on how she wanted to live her life.

After she told prison officials at Saskatchewan Penitentiary that she was transgender, she was held in segregation for six months. She was told it was due to her maximum-security rating but she believes it was because of her gender identity.

She said she was harassed and her food was contaminated after she disclosed she was transgender.

“I was threatened (by inmates) with being set on fire, stabbed, (having) my cell burned out, thrown over a balcony, (having my) head caved in with a weight bar.”

CSC said it was not aware of these allegations.

Aubee said she spoke to the prison doctor, a psychologist and her case manager about identifying as a woman. “I just kept telling myself I’m not going to live 25 years (in prison) and not be able to just be who I am,” she said. It took more than a decade of fighting, but she made it to Fraser Valley, where she said she was “treated exceptionally well.”

Coming out as trans is “one of the most difficult things, the most emotionally stressful, painful things you’re ever going to go through,” she said.

The Investigative Journalism Bureau (IJB) at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health is a collaborative investigative newsroom supported by Postmedia that partners with academics, researchers and journalists while training the next generation of investigative reporters.

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