Almost two thirds of transgender women in prisons who are legally recognised as men have been convicted of sex offences, new figures show.

Some 151 of the 245 trans women in prison at the end of March 2024 have been convicted of at least one sexual offence, according to government figures.

This is a rate of 62 per cent and is an increase on previous figures which showed that 49 per cent of trans women who reported their legal gender as male had a conviction for a sexual offence.

This rate is far higher than that of the male prison population as a whole – with about 17 per cent of men in prison in Engla