Introduction
Sarah Jane Baker, formerly Alan Baker, is a trans-identified male who has spent 30 years in prison for two violent offences. This is a look at his life, according to himself as presented in two interviews. This one, True Crime with Shaun Attwood:
And this one, Anything Goes with James English:
I have also looked at newspaper articles on him. Baker says he is now on life licence, i.e. on probation for the rest of his life. In 2020 Baker also announced his desire to stand in the next general election.
The childhood
Baker came from a home ruled over by a violent abusive father and this is the one of the things he is absolutely consistent on. It appears that his mother left the home and the children when he was young. I also do believe that Baker was probably abused by older men sexually. These factors may have disposed him to identifying with gender ideology. Sadly, Baker’s childhood is probably typical of many violent offenders.
The crimes
Trans Crime UK has summarised Baker’s violent past below, and there are also several links to articles about him on that page.
Alan /Sarah Jane Baker, a violent male who identifies as a trans woman, was jailed for life in 1998 on an indeterminate sentence (with a nine year tariff) after trying to kill another prisoner, an alleged child rapist. At the time Baker was serving a jail sentence for the kidnap and torture of a family member (stepmother’s brother). Baker reportedly also has previous convictions for armed robbery and drug dealing.
It was reported in August 2013 that Baker was undergoing surgery to become a trans woman while at HMP Elmley, a local Category B/C men’s prison, before transfer to a women’s prison. Baker was reportedly due a parole hearing in October 2013, aged 43, having been in prison since the age of 19.
In 2014 Baker made an allegation of assault and torture by two prison officers on the way back from an appointment at Charing Cross Hospital’s gender clinic. The prison has denied the claims.
From Trans Crime UK – https://transcrimeuk.com/2017/10/30/alan-baker-1/
Baker began his life of crime as a young teen, stealing BMX bikes and claims alternatively that he was both homeless, being abused at home and in the care system in secure children’s homes. He also alleges that he was a rent boy aged 12.
The first sentence
He describes his first custodial sentence as an adult was a 7 year sentence for ‘kidnapping, burglary, unlawful imprisonment and GBH with intent’. The victim was his stepmother’s brother. In the interview with James English he reflects that the victim in no way deserved the attack and says he feels he probably deserved 30 years just for that crime alone. In the Shaun Attwood interview, however, which premiered just a few months after the one with English in September 2020, Baker is very happy to let Attwood suggest that bullies deserve their comeuppance and directly blames his stepmother for encouraging violence towards him from his father, rather creating the impression that the victim was in some way entangled in that. In fact, he even states ‘I didn’t even challenge the conviction’, but obviously isn’t able expand on what grounds he might have been able to do so.
The second sentence
Baker’s second sentence was handed down for a crime committed in prison against another inmate. According to Baker the victim was his bully and responsible for encouraging extreme sexual and physical violence towards him. Of this conviction, in the Attwood podcast, Baker suggests that the conviction was not safe as he was on a ‘lot of medication’ and barely aware of what was going on around him. Attempted murder was the charge. Baker walked into the victim’s cell and attempted to strangle him until he was dead. Baker was just 21 years old at the time.
Other crimes
Baker revels in his criminal activities inside, including drug dealing, phone smuggling and sex work.
The ‘transition’
According to Baker, one night in 2017, at about 2.00am, he decided he was sick of having testicles so took a razor blade and cut them off. He was rushed to hospital for the job to be ‘finished off’, claiming he almost died from blood loss. However, this article from the Daily Mail in 2013, claims that the operation had already been performed. (I don’t think it matters very much either way, since clearly the procedure makes no difference in terms of effective ‘sex change’.) Anyway, Baker claims that he still has a penis and that it was just the testicles he wanted to remove, in order to stop the production of testosterone, which he felt ravaged by. During prison searches he claims two female officers had to search his top half, because he has breast implants, and a male officer would search his lower half, due to his alleged retained penis.
He claims he had to take matters into his own hands as the Gender Identity Clinic (GIC) he was under would only green-light his transition if he had lived in role for two years and specifically states this meant wearing female underwear and shoes in the English podcast.
It sounds like he had a reasonably good therapist at the Charing Cross GIC under the care of Dr James Barrett who challenged his self perception (although this reddit thread on Dr Barrett says otherwise). When Baker realised he would not get a prescription from the GIC for oestrogen he arranged for it to be smuggled into prison instead (with Attwood confirming that he also knows several men doing the same).
It appears that Baker was aware of the policy document below from 2011 (The Care and Management of Transsexual Prisoners) at the time it was written, stating that it was not helpful to him since the PSI (Prison Service Instructions) were guidelines only and many prisons took no notice of them (Baker claims to have been in 29 jails in 30 years).
The sex worker
Baker describes himself as a sex worker and says that he charges £190 per hour. He also says that he had sex for money whilst inside. Despite castration, his sex drive appears undiminished, as at least a good quarter of the interview with Attwood is spent flirting with, or otherwise entertaining Attwood with lurid stories, and the interview ends with Attwood licking his boots. Fantasies shared include being discovered by prison officers whilst being ‘spit roasted’ (a sexual position made up of three). In both interviews he makes the ridiculous claim that female prison officers approached him for sex and although he claims to be ‘pansexual’, it appears only men interest him sexually.
Baker has also written an article for Vice magazine called ‘What Prison Taught Me About Love and Sex’, in which many of his claims in the interviews are repeated.
Regardless of a person’s offence, sex still ranks pretty high on Mazlow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It’s just a matter of whether this is achieved by way of masturbation, consensual sex with another prisoner, or coercive means. As prisons are technically public buildings, any sexual activity between prisoners is illegal, although charges of public indecency are rarely enforced. On many occasions during my many years in prison, both male and female prison officers have found both I and a partner (or multiple partners), engaging in furious sexual activity. Unlike in the outside world, where shame prevents some people from expressing their desires, within the confines of our cells, we had few restraints. Whether getting spit-roasted, or fellating multiple men, the only limits were our imaginations. There were plenty of times men would pay me copious amounts of drugs to tie them up and humiliate them. I would do their bidding as long as we agreed to a safe word.
From the Vice article
Trans and prison abolition activism
Baker clearly became aware of the importance of activism in prison and I suspect was probably the main factor in his identifying as trans. He is also a prison abolitionist, but like all the other abolitionists I have ever come across, he had no alternative vision for how the state should contain dangerous criminals.
Bakers attends Trans Pride and the like. Baker often appears at these marches with his breast implants exposed and holds a placard ‘Be Trans, Do Crime’ (based on the ‘Be Gay, Do Crime’ gay activist slogan, in usage before homosexuality was decriminalised).
Recently Labour MPs Nadia Whittome, Angela Eagle and Lloyd Russell Moyle attended the same rally that Baker attended outside Downing Street – the Daily Mail wrote about this in full – see here – the MPs claimed they weren’t aware of who he was.
Baker claims association with/or has received help from a number of ‘organisations’. These are:
1. Incarcerated Workers Organising Committee
The Industrial Workers Organising Committee’s (IWOC) main activity is explicitly political; to be ‘a point of contact and source of support on the outside to help prisoners organise on the inside’ according to its About Us statement.
The IWOC posted this response on hearing that a number of men had been transferred back to the male prison estate, it is, of course, of the ‘trans women are women’ refrain. Its last news article, at the time of writing, was posted in February 2020.
I could see no record of them personally supporting him.
2. Queer Care
Baker claims that Queer Care had provided him with financial and moral support, giving the example of when he delivers make-up to a trans prisoner that Queer Care will pay for it. Queer Care has active social media accounts on Twitter and Instagram but no longer a website. After a bit of digging I discovered that Ada Cable is the man behind Queer Care, which received its compulsory strike off in April 2021 from Companies House.
Cable is friends with Tara Wolf, the man who attacked Maria MacLachlan and had tweeted about the case extensively at the time – see Maria’s blog about him here.
3. Transprisoner Alliance
This was Baker’s own project, and still grandiosely describes himself as its CEO. However, the website domain no longer exists but a Pink News piece lauding the project still does.
Since being released in September, 2019, she has formed the Transprisoner Alliance which provides “both practical and emotional support to one of the most marginalised groups of people residing in our prisons”.
The non-profit organises letter and visits for trans people behind bars, and it says that 90 per cent of trans prisoners receive no letters or visits from family or friends.
It also provides legal assistance with advice for an in-house barrister on legal name changes and gender recognition certificates.
One of the things that helped her gender dysphoria in prison was makeup, sometimes brought in by sympathetic officers, so the Transprisoner Alliance also brings makeup and gender appropriate clothing to trans inmates.
From the Pink News article ‘Britain’s longest-serving trans prisoner is now helping trans people locked up in the wrong prisons’
4. National Prison Radio/Prison Radio Association
Baker claims to have been invited to do podcasts by National Prison Radio, which appears to be limited to this essay that Baker read out as part of its Human Justice podcast series. The recording is 9 minutes long and is presumably an excerpt from his book Transgender Behind Prison Walls. In it he claims he sent out a survey to the one hundred trans prisoners that he knew of but got back over 1,000 responses (i.e. claiming there are many more trans prisoners than other studies have shown, indicating that people were hiding their gender identity). I suspect that no one at the Prison Radio Association bothered to fact check whether this survey data really existed before publishing his piece.
He also discusses the trans-identified male unit at Downview female prison. He admits that sexual assaults by male prisoners was making transferring to female estates difficult (lip service, I think, to nuance rather than genuine concern).
The Prison Radio Association is a charity and patrons include Lady Shami Chakrabati and Jon Snow.
I also discovered that Baker had tried his own hand at producing his own podcast but stopped after his first episode (a five minute interview with a nurse on covid).
5. Community Action on Prison Expansion
Is another one which no longer has an active website but does run a social media account on Twitter.
Baker was very praiseworthy of CAPE but from the Twitter feed it wasn’t clear that they are actively engaged in anything other than boosting support via retweets, with a special focus on trans-identified people, and crowdfunding.
6. Prisoner Solidarity Network
Baker has also been helped by the Prisoner Solidarity Network, another supposed grassroots group, which wants to ‘dismantle’ the criminal justice system. Its last post was in December 2021 on the website. It has a tweet account which is rarely used. Another anonymous account.
Baker claimed that it was amazing at fundraising and had helped get money for mobile phones inside (which is classed as a criminal offence and carries up to a 2 year prison sentence) and fans to cool prison cells down.
Borderline personality disorder
Baker admits that he has been given a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. It becomes particularly apparent during his interview with Attwood that he is given to flights of fancy, and one notable example is when he describes the chairman of the Prison Officer Association as the ‘most powerful man in Britain’ before claiming said person entered his cell and ordered him to take off his clothes. Attwood says nothing to challenge this patent fantasy. However, Baker does appear to understand that he has a problem separating fantasy and reality.
In both interviews Baker claims that he attempted to abscond from prison with Charles Bronson (dubbed the UK’s most dangerous prisoner), with a plane waiting to pick them up. Both interviewers fail to spot this lie, quite obvious really given Bronson has been held in segregation for pretty much the entirety of his sentence and has held enormous media attention. However, Baker did once abscond from an open prison in 2007, reported on quite widely at the time.
He also claims to have had a friendship of sorts with the serial killer Dennis Nilsen, this article in the Scottish Sun (2018) was published largely based on piece Baker wrote for a prisoners’ magazine. Baker claims that he regularly played board games with Nilsen, which seems possible. He also claims that Nilsen often accompanied him on the piano, whilst he played the violin, which doesn’t.
Baker makes numerous claims about the violence he was on the receiving end of whilst in prison for being trans, including rape (a snooker cue inserted into his rectum) and that he had boiling water and sugar poured over his chest (I think it’s clear from photos of him half naked that this has never happened).
Currently
In a recent post on Facebook, Baker described himself as a ‘nasty extremist’ and encouraged people to arm themselves ‘for protection’ for the upcoming London Trans Pride arranged for 8 July.
Interestingly …
Despite being very engaged in trans rights and prison abolition, at no point does Baker express any personal desire to have been housed in the female prison estate. It sounds very much like he was happy being amongst other men and indeed very successful at dominating other prisoners and manipulating staff/the system. In both of the long interviews I don’t believe he even mentions the issue once. This seems to suggest that trans-identified status has provided him with all the leverage needed within the male prison system to gain extra privileges. It is certainly the reason that he now has a public profile of sorts.
Additionally, trans activist and abolitionist groups have clearly lent support to him whilst in prison and immediately on his release. These organisations present themselves as grassroots and as legion but they are all anonymous and have little regular content either on social media or their websites, making them seem more like a front to me than anything.
I think over the coming years we will be seeing more men like this enter the public sphere, being received as if they are some sort of savants, stamped with approval of phoney organisations, or those who aren’t prepared to do any due diligence.
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The Lies They Tell 
Succinct and frightening. Aside from ol’ Lizard Eyes, the names of the enablers of such people are always interesting; and how they recur … Shami (Rod Liddle’s intersection of everybody’s six degrees); Ardingley public school’s very own progressive Jon ‘Rainbow tie’ Snow; and the fragrant Nadia – oh the lucky people of Nottingham East (unless I am mixing her up with some other vile M.P.) Thank you again and a happy Ascensiontide for us all.
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