In January 2023, Isla Bryson, a 31-year-old Scottish transgender woman from Clydebank, Dunbartonshire, was convicted of the rapes of two women. Bryson committed the rapes in 2016 and 2019, prior to Bryson's gender transition. Bryson was charged in 2019 and started transitioning in 2020. Bryson attended a beauty course in 2021 before her trial, with coursemates and courseholder Ayrshire College stating that they were unaware of Bryson's charges.
The case caused controversy after Bryson was remanded to a women's prison to await sentence, though she was segregated from the other prisoners pending risk assessment, following which she was transferred to a male prison. The case was subsequently used to criticise the Scottish Parliament's passage of the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill, though the bill was not in effect at the time.
Following controversy over the Bryson case, the Scottish Prison Service announced an "urgent review" into the transgender cases within its prisons, pausing the movement of any trans prisoners while the review was in progress. After the review, it was announced that in the future, transgender prisoners would be initially accommodated according to their sex at birth while an assessment was carried out into whether it was more appropriate to house them in a men's or women's prison.