Transgender prisoner found dead in cell at men's maximum security jail

A transgender inmate has been found dead at Woodhill Prison in Milton Keynes.

Staff and paramedics attempted resuscitation on Joanne Latham but she was pronounced dead early on Friday morning

Joanne Latham was serving life sentences for several attempted murders - including an attack on a fellow prisoner.

Latham, who was formerly known as Edward, is understood to have identified herself as female since August and is the second transgender inmate to have died in an all-male prison in recent weeks.

She is known to have been jailed for attempted murder in 2001 and to have received further life sentences in 2007 and 2011 after incidents at HMP Frankland in County Durham and at Rampton hospital, a high-security mental health facility in Nottinghamshire.

A Prison Service spokesman said:

Vicky Thompson, another transgender prisoner, also in a male prison, was found dead at HMP Leeds on 13 November after telling her partner she wanted to be transferred to a women's jail.

Liberal Democrat Baroness Barker told the Lords last week that the death of the 21-year-old showed that placing transgender women in male prisoners was dangerous.

"Prisoners should be housed in the estate of their acquired gender in the first instance, and only moved to the other estate following a thorough investigation that has ruled out all other safe alternatives," Baroness Barker said.