The suspect in the Salem mass murder outside Stockholm is legally a man, but according to close relatives he now identifies as a woman. The person has also changed his name and uses a female pronoun.
In December 2024, a father was sentenced to life in prison for murdering his two children in their home in Södertälje. During his time in prison, the father changed his legal gender to female - and is now in a women's prison.
Another person, sentenced to life imprisonment for a high-profile murder, has changed legal gender and, according to TV4, will be transferred to a women's prison shortly.
The cases have received a lot of attention and the debate about legal versus biological sex has at times been heated.
“Very unfortunate”
RFSL's union chairman Lovise Brade is careful to condemn the crimes but is also concerned that the entire minority group of transgender people will be viewed with suspicion.
Many transgender people, ordinary, innocent people, are experiencing increased hatred and threats.
In general, when a person who is part of a minority group commits a crime, other people in the same group are at risk of being prejudiced against, she says.
Brade believes that it is the correctional service that is best suited to decide in which prison individuals should serve their sentence.
Want to see a change in the law
Moderate MP Fredrik Kärrholm has been tasked by the government with reviewing the Prison Act, which the Swedish Prison and Probation Service relies on when making decisions about where people should serve their sentences.
Kärrholm believes that the law must be changed, something he will propose when he presents his part of the investigation. The prison service should base its placement on biological sex, he believes.
It is in the prison law that we need to distinguish legal gender from biological gender, he says.
Legal gender corresponds to perceived identity, and a problem arises there because biological women risk being imprisoned with biological men, he continues.
When it comes to the high-profile cases, Kärrholm says they shed light on the problem he sees.
I can only state that no biological woman should be locked up with a biological man. It should be an absolute right for women that the law must be able to ensure, he says.
