Copyright and publication details
Transgender Behind Prison Walls
Sarah Jane Baker
ISBN 978-1-909976-45-0 (Paperback)
ISBN 978-1-910979-31-0 (Epub ebook)
ISBN 978-1-910979-32-7 (Adobe ebook)
Copyright 2017 This work is the copyright of Sarah Jane Baker. All intellectual property and associated rights are hereby asserted and reserved by the author in full compliance with UK, European and international law. No part of this book may be copied, reproduced, stored in any retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, including in hard copy or via the internet, without the prior written permission of the publishers to whom all such rights have been assigned worldwide.
Cover design 2017 Waterside Press.
Cataloguing-In-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book can be obtained from the British Library.
e-bookTransgender Behind Prison Walls is available as an ebook and also to subscribers of Ebrary, Ebsco, Myilibrary and Dawsonera.
Printed by Lightning Source
Main UK distributor Gardners Books, 1 Whittle Drive, Eastbourne, East Sussex, BN23 6QH. Tel: +44 (0)1323 521777; sales@gardners.com; www.gardners.com
USA and Canada distributor Ingram Book Company, One Ingram Blvd, La Vergne, TN 37086, USA. (800) 937-8000, orders@ingrambook.com, ipage.ingrambook.com
Published 2017 by
Waterside Press Ltd., Sherfield Gables, Sherfield on Loddon, Hook, Hampshire
United Kingdom RG27 0JG
Telephone +44(0)1256 882250
Email enquiries@watersidepress.co.uk
Online catalogue WatersidePress.co.uk
Table of Contents
To live the truth is hard
To live a lie is tragic.
Anon
To thine own self be true.
William Shakespeare
As a snake can shed its skin,
We, too, can shed our past,
Time and time again.
Dalai Lama
The truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind.
Emily Dickinson
Acknowledgements
To Pam Stockwell, my friend, mentor, teacher and personal secretary. Why you have put up with me for so long still amazes me.
Thanks to: Jenine Abbott, Lord Berkeley, Mickey (C M) Brown, Simone Bunty, Deanne Cummings, Drew Ashlyn Cunningham, Luke Davis, Timmy Time Douglass, Sarah Franken, Victoria Hathaway, Anonhi Hegarty, Stephanie Jarvis, Caitlyn Jenner, Paris Lees, Jason Lightoller, Chelsea Manning, Kellie Maloney, David Marney, Donna Newbury, Mitzi Romiti and Piawacket, Rebecca Root, Nicola Ann Rose, Hoss and Loretta Sobhanieh, Abby Stein, Kay West (President of the Beaumont Society), Suzanne White and Andy Wixen.
Thanks also to: Nurse Jayden, Dr Celia Taylor, James Watson, Ian Pressland and Hilary Sturt, Tracey, Jay and Jack Baker, the Wachowski sisters, Deena Kaye Rose, Colin, June Louise, Ajay, Clarissa, Sara, Charmaine and Natasha Johnson, Michaela Powney, Sue-Anne and Michael, Kim Leggett, Stacy Novak, Vicky Lee, Sue Sheppard, Leona Lovett, Steven Lowe, Terry Reed of the Gender research and Education Society (GIRES), HM Prison Lewes Integrated Drug Treatment Staff (IDTS) Jackie and Sarah, Prison Reform Trust, Howard League for Penal Reform, Inside Time and Converse.
Special thanks to their Royal Highnesses Princes William and Harry, and the thousands of members of our armed forces who have openly supported those Lesbian, Gay, Transgender, Bisexual and Queer (LGBTQ) members who also serve and protect us.
Finally, thank you to Raphael Rowe from BBC Panorama, LBC Radio, Kerry and William, Mia Harris of the Centre for Criminology at the University of Oxford, Professor David Wilson of Birmingham City University and Professor Alison Liebling of the Cambridge Institute of Criminology.
About the author
Sarah Jane Baker is a transgender woman serving a life sentence in a mens prison. She was formerly known as Alan Baker before her transition in 2011. She has spent over 25 years in prison (despite a tariff of nine years), having received a discretionary life sentence for the attempted murder of another prisoner. She has spent time in some 30 prisons, as well as youth custody centres when younger and has experienced maximum security segregation on many occasions. Her training includes bricklaying, painting and decorating, industrial laundry, engineering, industrial cleaning, photography, film-making and welding and she has worked as a shepherd at HM Prison North Sea Camp and a diesel fitter at HM Prison Leyhill.
Sarah is an award-winning poet and composer, an accomplished violinist and guitarist, and a consultant to the London Chamber Orchestra. She has played in over 500 services in prison chapels, performed for the Cheltenham Festival and in Gloucester Cathedral, and appeared on BBC radio. She co-wrote a play that was performed on Radio 4 in 2003. She also did a stint acting at HM Prison Leyhill Theatre.
Writing as Alan Baker she received a Koestler Trust Silver Award for the manuscript of her first book, Life Imprisonment: An Unofficial Guide (Waterside Press, 2013). Her other awards include a Koestler Silver Award for Essays and Articles, a rare Koestler Platinum Award for a recording of Paganini for Solo Violin, and one for a recording of the Bach Partita No.3 in E Major BWV 1006 and Bach Partita No.2 in D Minor BWV 1004. Many of her poems have appeared in Koestler Awards Anthologies (1997 and 1998), Poetic Licence, Poetry Croydon Live at the internet, and numerous prison magazines. She won Financial Times poetry awards in 1997 and 1998, and has been a contributor to newspapers and magazines, including the Saturday Times Magazine, Daily Telegraph,Croydon Advertiser, national prisons newspaper Inside Time, Prison Service Journal and Probation Journal.
Sarah holds a Stonebridge Associated Colleges (SAC) Diploma in Drug and Alcohol Counselling and an SAC Certificate in Developmental Psychology. As well as corresponding with transgender prisoners throughout the world, including American State, Federal and Military prisoners, Sarah also keeps in contact with other amateur theoretical physicists at Haifa University, Israel and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Her wide-ranging scientific interests include T-cell immunology and electromagnetism.
She is working on her third book, Borstal to Bedlam.
