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Judge to decide if transgender woman with history of sex crimes should go to women's jail
A judge has reserved a decision on whether a transgender inmate being held at a men’s prison, Amanda Cooper, should be moved to a women’s facility.
Cooper, 59, has a history of sexual offences against women in Quebec that date back to the 1980s. The crimes were committed when Cooper was living as a man. Cooper has been deemed a dangerous offender and is serving a third federal sentence after a 2001 conviction. While in prison, Cooper underwent gender surgery.
Lawyers argued virtually before federal court Justice Janet Fuhrer on Monday morning.
The case was taken to federal court for judicial review after Cooper was involuntarily transferred from one men’s institution to another, despite identifying as a woman.
Correctional Service Canada says the decision to move Cooper from Atlantic Institution in New Brunswick to Millhaven Institution in Ontario in 2025 was because of Cooper’s refusal to integrate into the prison population. Instead, Cooper remained in a Structured Intervention Unit (SIU), essentially in isolation, but that it was self-imposed, according to CSC.
It is the duty of CSC to mitigate SIU placement. The goal of SIU, as it is described by CSC , is for the offender to return to the inmate population “as soon as possible.” The agency said it had done its due diligence, offering Cooper many options.
CSC said the relationship between Cooper and the case management team had devolved, and therefore, decided to move Cooper to Millhaven, where there would be a new case management team and other suitable measures in place to avoid SIU.
Meanwhile, counsel for Cooper, Jessica Rose, told the court that there was a significant safety risk if Cooper were to be part of the general prison population due to the surgery. Cooper is a “woman with a vagina,” said Rose. There are also serious harms to health and well-being when a person remains in segregation, she said.
Rose also argued that if a man committed crimes against men, it would be “absurd” to conclude that the offender should be sent to a women’s prison to avoid being incarcerated with the type of people he has victimized in the past. She noted that inmates in women’s prisons also have histories of committing offences against women.
“Security and risk is CSC’s bread and butter,” said Rose. “That’s their expertise, and to say that they have no capacity to manage risk for this one particular individual… their decision doesn’t go far enough to explain why that should be the case for Ms. Cooper, but not for dangerous cisgender women who have a history of sexually victimizing women.”
CSC previously denied Cooper’s request to transfer to a women’s prison due to safety concerns for inmates and staff.
Rather than being moved to Millhaven, Rose said that Cooper should have been transferred to one of five federal women’s prisons in Canada. That would have served the purpose of getting Cooper out of the SIU.
Rose claimed that if Cooper partook in CSC’s intake assessment process today, the inmate who has female genitalia would be placed in a women’s prison. Inmates are placed according to their gender identity regardless of their sex, per CSC’s policy on gender diverse offenders, known as the Commissioner’s Directive 100 (CD-100) . However, if overriding health and safety concerns can’t be resolved, “the offender will be placed in a site that better aligns with their current sex (i.e., anatomy),” it says.
Rose points to the fact that Cooper’s current sex is female, and is marked as such in CSC’s offender management system. But she said because Cooper is already in prison, Cooper is subject to “completely different decision-making framework that ignores all of the principles set out in CD-100.” She called it “incoherent decision making.”
Counsel for CSC, Laura Rhodes, disagreed.
The hypothetical situation offered by Rose assumes that Cooper’s behaviour has changed. It glazes over the fact that while at Atlantic Institution, Cooper became “increasingly verbally abusive towards staff, threatening their psychological emotional safety, stating violent and criminally threatening comments against members of her case management team,” said Rhodes.
It escalated to the point where Cooper was “denied access to a staff member that she showed fixation toward in February of 2025 and there were several other women staff members that she could not have contact with.”
Rhodes said the position of the case management team was for Cooper to work toward being moved to medium security at a men’s institution. The women’s institutions Cooper has requested are “less restrictive and therefore not suitable for her current risk level.”
If Justice Fuhrer decides to quash the involuntary transfer decision, Cooper will be moved from Millhaven back to Atlantic, said Rhodes.
Rose said that the remedy for the situation, however, would be for Cooper to be transferred to a women’s prison.
No date has been provided for a decision.
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