Inquest hears Vikki Thompson died within a month of arriving at HMP Leeds where she was classed as being a suicide risk

A transgender woman sent to a male prison was found dead in her cell after repeatedly warning that she would leave “in a box”, a jury has heard.

Vikki Thompson, 21, had been living as a female since she was 10. She died within a month of arriving at HMP Leeds in October 2015. She had changed her name when she was 17, but had never applied for a gender recognition certificate and had not had any gender reassignment surgery, the coroner Jonathan Leach told Wakefield coroner’s court on Tuesday.

Under guidelines in England and Wales, prisoners are sent to a jail according to their birth gender unless they have received a gender recognition certificate.

Thompson, who struggled with drug and alcohol addiction, had been in touch with gender identity experts at the Tavistock clinic in London with a view to transitioning but had not begun any treatment before being sent to prison, the court heard.

On arrival in jail she was immediately classed as being a suicide risk, having told both prison officers and custody staff in court she would leave prison “in a box”.

Before long she complained of bullying, accusing another prisoner of putting a note under her cell door inviting her to “spend the night” with him, the court heard. One day, when she was found in her cell with a cut to her face, Thompson told officers she hated her face because she looked like a man and could “only cope by self-harming”.

At her request Thompson was eventually transferred to A wing, home to the most vulnerable prisoners, despite senior prison staff fearing that she would be a target for some of the sex offenders held there, the jury heard.



Prison officers reported that inmates on the segregation unit below hers would regularly shout abuse up at her on the landing.

At the time of her death Thompson was still classed as a suicide risk, but the risk had been downgraded, meaning checks on her were reduced from twice hourly to hourly.

Robert Steele, Thompson’s boyfriend for the three years leading up to her death, told the court she had told him she didn’t want to be sent to a male jail. When asked why, he said: “She classed herself as female.”.

The coroner read out a letter Thompson sent to Steele from her cell. “I just feel like I won’t be here no more. I don’t know when I’m getting out of here, my head is fucked so I know I’m going to do something silly. I don’t want to, but I can’t do this,” she wrote.

He admitted the pair took drugs but said Thompson was “getting her life back on track” when she was sent to jail.

Steele told the court that Thompson’s solicitor had promised “he would do everything he could so that she would be send to a female jail”, but that Thompson needed to make a formal request to the prison governor for transfer.

Thompson’s mother, Lisa Harrison, said she believed her daughter simply disliked prison generally and didn’t have a particular problem with being in the male prison system.

“I know that [Robert] keeps mentioning that Vikki didn’t want to go to a male prison. I don’t believe that’s true. She didn’t like going to prison, but nobody did,” Harrison said in a written statement read to the court.

She said her daughter had been in custody several times before, including a young offender institution when she was 16 or 17. She was convicted of “beating up” a man who had “tried it on with her”, the jury heard.

Thompson also spent three months in HMP Leeds between March and June in 2015, the year she died. The jury was not told why she was sent there on either occasion.

The court heard of Thompson’s troubled past, which began as a baby when she was hit by a family member and then taken into care, according to her mother. She said she had been “groomed” and raped by another family friend and struggled with drug and alcohol abuse. Medical records report low moods and depression and she claimed she had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

Thompson told prison doctors that before going to jail she had been drinking 12 cans of strong lager every day.

A toxicology report completed shortly after her death on 13 November found traces of a synthetic cannabinoid (similar to, but not specifically the former legal high spice) in her urine and blood, as well as the heroin substitute mephedrone.

The inquest continues.