Sarah Jane Baker: Difference between revisions

Sarah Jane Baker
Baker interviewed in 2020
Born	Alan Baker 1969 or 1970 (age 54–55) Brixton, South London
Occupation	Transgender rights activist
Known for	UK's longest serving transgender prisoner
Notable work	Life Imprisonment : An Unofficial Guide Transgender Behind Prison Walls
Website	sarah-jane-baker.com

Sarah Jane Baker (born in 1969 or 1970) is a British transgender rights activist, artist, violinist, author, former violent felon, and long term prison inmate.

Baker was assigned male at birth, and grew up in a large family, neglected by her parents. She was imprisoned, initially for seven years as a young offender for kidnapping and torturing her step-mother's brother, which was then extended to a life sentence for the attempted murder of another inmate^[1] she said had repeatedly attacked her,^[2] and the rape of another.^[3] She escaped for three months, during which she engendered a son.^[4]

Baker says she learned to read and write in prison; there she published two books and contributed to a third, and created artwork that was exhibited after her release. She served 30 years in 29 different male prisons, even after she had come out as transgender female, and cut off her own testicles with a razor blade.^[5] She was the UK's longest serving transgender prisoner at the time of her release.^[5] After her release in 2019, Baker became an outspoken and controversial political and transgender rights activist.

Early life

Baker was born in 1969 or 1970 in Brixton, South London.^[6][1] She was assigned male at birth and named Alan. Baker grew up in Camberwell in a poor family, where her father had numerous partners; she was one of 14 children.^[6][1] She alternated between living with her family and foster care.^[5] She says she felt she was a woman trapped in a male body,^[5] and was regularly afraid of being battered on the streets due to being "a little tranny with a violin".^[6]

In 1987, Baker's father remarried and in 1988 moved to Folkestone, in Kent, south-east England. The Baker children were often not welcome at their father's new home, and lived rough on the streets in London.^[7] In March 1989, Baker's father asked his children to trace their step-mother who had left home. Baker, now aged 20, her 18 year old brother, and two teenage male associates went to the step-mother's family residence in Thornton Heath, London, where they found her brother. They broke in, armed with knives, kidnapped the step-mother's brother in a stolen van, and tortured him until he was released by police after almost 24 hours.^[7] In September 1989, Baker and her brother were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in a young offender institution, with their accomplices receiving six years youth custody.^[7]

Imprisonment

The first of what would eventually become 29 different prisons over 30 years for Baker was Feltham Young Offenders Institution.^[1]

On 12 December 1989, while Baker was being held at HM Prison Swinfen Hall young offender institution, she tried to kill a fellow inmate,^[8] an alleged child rapist who Baker said had bullied her, attacking her three times previously.^[4][2] She was sentenced to life imprisonment for the attempted murder,^[9] and was transferred to HM Prison Birmingham men's prison called Winson Green.^[3] Two weeks after the prison move, Baker discovered that her new cellmate was a multiple rapist. She raped him, admitted to the offence, and was sentenced to another six years imprisonment, to run concurrently with her lifetime sentence.^[3]

In 1994, Baker's 17 year old brother was killed while walking home from college. In 2008, Baker wrote that she forgave her brother's killer, since he was also a victim.^[10][11]

In 1996, Baker began making art in prison; she couldn't get pencils because she had issues with self harm, but she paid for a cross stitch kit.^[1]

In 2007, Baker was being held in HM Prison Leyhill, an "open prison", where inmates had minimal supervision. On April 7, she and another inmate who had been convicted of murder escaped.^[12] Baker's fellow fugitive was recaptured less than two weeks later,^[13] but Baker herself remained at large for about 100 days. During this period of freedom, she met a woman who later gave birth to Baker's son.^[4]

In September 2009, now in HM Prison Elmley, Baker wrote an article in Inside Time in which she said she loved prison. She called herself a "professional prisoner", and said that she had so much freedom from responsibility that she never wanted to be freed or paroled.^[14][11]

A pen pal who befriended Baker in prison tracked down Baker's mother, who then visited Baker in prison regularly until her death in June 2013.^[4]

Baker spent part of her sentence in HM Prison Full Sutton during the time serial killer Dennis Nilsen was imprisoned there (2003-2018). She writes that they played violin and piano duets, and the board game Scrabble, which she says Nilsen cheated at.^[15]

Books

Baker says that she learned to read and write in prison.^[5] While imprisoned, she published two books and contributed a section to a third.

On 8 July 2013, Baker, writing as Alan Baker, published Life Imprisonment : An Unofficial Guide, via Waterside Press, ISBN 978-1-904380-93-1. It was intended to be read by prisoners newly sentenced to life imprisonment, and comprised 41 segments explaining their journey. In a long Acknowledgments section Baker "most of all" thanks her son, siblings, and mother, and a To My Victims section includes a long acknowledgement of guilt and apology judged sincere by a reviewer.^[16][17] The foreword was written by Tim Newell, former governor of HM Prison Grendon. It won the Koestler Trust Silver Award, and was reviewed by academic journals about prison studies.^[18][17]

Baker's second book, Transgender Behind Prison Walls, writing as Sarah Baker, Waterside Press, 15 March 2017, ISBN 978-1909976450, drew even more notice. It was written with the help of Baker's pen pal Pam Stockwell, who also wrote the foreword.^[4] It was published after Baker's public gender transition, and described being a transgender woman in a male prison.^{[19][20][21][22]} It includes how, in early 2017, Baker grew so desperate to transition that she cut off her own testicles with a razor blade.^[19][9] A review called it a supportive guide written with a generous kindness and well thought out suggestions.^[23]

Baker also contributed a chapter on the bureaucracy of gender transition in prison to Prison: A Survival Guide by Carl Cattermole, 20 June 2019, ISBN 978-1529103496, Penguin Books.^[24]

Gender transition

Baker began her formal gender transition soon after publishing her first book in 2013, asking to be called Sarah.^[4] She continued to spend her sentence imprisoned in male jails. She says that after coming out as transgender she was stabbed and raped by other inmates.^[5] Almost immediately after Baker's first book came out, in August 2013, the Daily Mail and the Daily Mirror, both popular British tabloids, falsely reported that she had gender-affirming surgery paid for by the National Health Service at taxpayer expense.^[25][26][19] She was allowed makeup but not regular estrogen for feminizing hormone therapy until she cut off her own testicles with a razor blade in 2017.^[5]

In July 2019, Baker was the longest serving of approximately 140 "out", or publicly revealed, transgender prisoners in England and Wales.^[2] 42 of these were in women's prisons, but not Baker, who was in a Vulnerable Prisoners Unit at HM Prison Lewes.^[2] The expressed stance of the Prison Officers' Association was that some inmates were genuinely gender dysphoric, others were "looking at it as a soft option for prison life".^[27] Baker wrote "if constant bullying, comments, sexual harassment and isolation are your idea of a soft option then I'd suggest you haven't really thought things through."^[2] When asked if she would have preferred a women's prison, Baker denied it, saying she liked sex with men, which she would never get there.^[2] After release, she wrote an article for Vice magazine about her experiences of love and sex as a transgender woman in male prison.^[28]

After release

Baker was released on parole from prison in September 2019.^[5][9][29] Initially she lived in a bedsit, supporting herself by street performance on her violin and selling posters of her embroidery online.^[2] In February 2020, her cross-stitching was exhibited at the Brighton Museum & Art Gallery's "Queer the Pier" exhibit dedicated to queer history.^[30][31] In 2022 her art appeared in an article in Architectural Review.^[32]

By 2020, Baker set up an advocacy group called The Transprisoner Alliance to deliver support like letters and cosmetics to transgender prisoners.^[5][9] In 2021 she announced plans to contest the Richmond Park Parliament constituency on a platform of prison reform and opposing gentrification.^[6][33] She received Universal Credit, a supplement for low income, and attended many protests, including some to support her partner, a National Health Service nurse and Unite the Union representative.^[33]

Baker became increasingly known for outspoken transgender rights activism. In May 2021, she was featured in a short documentary video titled Be Trans, Do Crime.^[34] She carried a sign with that text, and another reading "Kill JK Rowling" (referring to the author's controversial views on transgender issues) to the June 2021 London Trans+ Pride parade.^[35] In January 2023, Baker criticized Prime Minister Rishi Sunak's blocking of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill.^[36] She led a protest at the inaugural event of transgender critical feminist philosopher's Kathleen Stock's The Lesbian Project, where her violent history contributed to Stock's nerves.^[37]

At the 8 July 2023 London Trans+ Pride Parade, Baker called for attendees to punch any TERF (a derogatory term for transgender critical feminists) they see in the face; her statement was videotaped and widely distributed.^[38] Asked for reaction, London Trans+ Pride organizers said that while they condemned violence, they supported her expression of righteous anger.^[39][40] Baker's speech was reported to Metropolitan Police, who initially stated that the call to violence was hypothetical, but after investigating arrested her on 12 July for incitement to violence.^[41][42] According to the terms of her parole, she was recalled to prison pending her trial,^[29] specifically to HMP Wandsworth, a men's prison.^[43] Supporters, led by Baker's partner, launched a "Free Sarah Jane Baker" campaign online in July,^[29][44] and protested outside Westminster Magistrates Court in August.^[45] On 31 August 2023, she was found not guilty by magistrate Tan Ikram, after she said that she was just trying to get on the front page of the Daily Mail, and wished she could take her words back.^[46][47]

References