Headline and subhead:

Police and courts allowing criminals to choose their gender

Fears that allowing criminals to self-identify without legally changing sex is skewing crime statistics

Fears that? Of course allowing criminals to self-identify their sex is skewing statistics – how could it not?

Police forces and the courts are allowing criminals to self-identify their gender if they have not legally changed sex.

Surely the Telegraph means even if they have not legally changed sex. Surely the Telegraph doesn’t mean cops and courts are forbidding criminals to self-id if they have legally changed sex.

Nitpick nitpick nitpick, I know, but honestly, this subject is so full of obfuscation and lying all by itself, journalism ought to be careful not to help with the obfuscation.

Criminals who believe they are a different gender are routinely referred to by their preferred identity by police and in court.

No, criminals who say they are a different gender. We don’t know what they believe; other people’s beliefs are a black box. We can know what they claim; we can’t know what they really think.

That bit of basic epistemology is particularly important with this subject because it’s so very susceptible to deceit. Anybody can claim to be the opposite sex, and the current social norm is to punish people who question the claim. Donald Trump could claim to be a woman and we’d be told not to raise a skeptical eyebrow.

It had previously been revealed that some forces record transgender rapists as female but guidance issued by forces and the courts indicates that criminals of all kinds can self-identify.

It is feared that the self-ID policy – which remains widely in force despite a series of high-profile trans cases – skews crime statistics.

Rapists should never ever be recorded as female. The Telegraph does go on to say that.

Other forces, including South Yorkshire Police, require transgender suspects and criminals to have first acquired a GRC before they can be recorded under their trans identity.

But if criminals do have one, the force will recognise their gender transition even in sexual offence cases which can only be committed by biological males, such as rape.

Yes such as rape, that crime against female people that is rarely reported, rarely investigated if reported, rarely prosecuted if investigated, rarely convicted if prosecuted.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), which represents senior police officers, advises forces to do the same.

“Policing should refer to a person’s sex, the law determines that where an individual holds a GRC, they have legally changed their sex,” a spokesman for the NPCC said.

Oh go to hell NPCC. Think about what you’re saying.

The policies have prompted critics to demand a change in approach across the criminal justice system. Maya Forstater, chief executive of Sex Matters, said female victims were being treated “with utter contempt”.

“The recording of male rapists as female is surely one of the most heinous consequences of trans ideology being embedded in our public institutions,” she told The Telegraph.

Damn right.