Nicola Sturgeon flails in car crash interview as she admits violent trans criminals shouldn’t be in women’s prisons

NICOLA Sturgeon was flummoxed in a car crash TV interview as she finally admitted violent trans criminals shouldn’t serve time in women’s prisons.

The SNP leader tied herself up in knots as she struggled to explain her policy U-turn.

She was speaking after facing a backlash following the case of Isla Bryson, 31.

Bryson, who now identifies as a woman, was convicted of two rapes committed prior to her gender change.

She was remanded to a Scottish women’s prison but moved to a men’s jail after an outcry.

It has led the SNP to temporarily ban transgender inmates with violence against women raps from female jails.

Ms Sturgeon said she had nothing to apologise for on the U-turn.

But author JK Rowling hit back at the First Minister.

Women’s rights campaigners like Ms Rowling, dubbed Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, or TERFs, are often targeted for criticism.

But she said: “Excluding women from women’s prisons because they’ve got penises, male pattern baldness and have committed a couple of rapes seems awfully TERFy to me.”

When asked if she believes “all trans women are women”, Ms Sturgeon said: “Trans women are women but . . . there are circumstances in which a trans woman will be in the male prison estate because of the nature of the crime.”

Asked if women born women should be in a male prison, she said: “I don’t think there are circumstances there.”

Scottish Tory equalities spokesman Rachael Hamilton rapped Ms Sturgeon for “the number of U-turns she has performed on this issue.”

Ms Sturgeon is also under pressure over a new identity law passed in Edinburgh but blocked by Westminster.”