The case of a convicted sex offender who retains her male genitalia has prompted a review of prison guidelines

The Prison Service is to stop many transgender inmates, including sex offenders, serving their sentences in women’s prisons.

The justice minister Ed Argar said the government was “revising” guidelines that said the “great majority” of trans prisoners should be allowed to “experience the system in the gender in which they identify”.

Options now under consideration include “clustering” trans prisoners in special wings or sections of wings. A number of high-risk trans inmates have already been moved back to men’s prisons, The Sunday Times can reveal.

Ministers acted after Karen White, a convicted sex offender who retains her male genitalia, was allowed into New Hall women’s prison near Wakefield, where she sexually assaulted two female prisoners.

The change has become more urgent after officials forecast that