Justin Trudeau has pledged to allow transgender prisoners serve their sentences in prisons that correspond to their gender identity.

The Canadian Prime Minister made the promise after a transgender woman described the current placement policy as “torture”.

“I will make sure we look at it and we address it and we do right in recognizing that trans rights are human rights and we need to make sure we are defending everyone’s dignity and rights in every way we can,” he said.

The pledge comes after the announcement that Correctional Service Canada released a policy that stated trans people must be placed corresponding to birth sex, and not gender identity.

“Pre-operative male to female offenders with gender dysphoria will be held in men’s institutions and pre-operative female to male offenders with gender dysphoria will be held in women’s institutions,” it reads.

The Correctional Investigator of Canada, Ivan Zinger, said that the CSC move was “disappointing”.

“In my view, there should be a presumption of penitentiary placement based on gender identity, not based on genitalia,” he told CBC News.

Zinger believes the current policy violates human rights and will be going Trudeau in his fight to change the current system.

“The correctional service has not endorsed what is, in many ways, the government’s commitment to promoting and protecting the rights of transgender, transexual and gender non-conforming people.”