Sarah Jane Baker

Sarah Jane Baker (born 1969) is a British transgender rights activist, author, convicted criminal, prison inmate, and artist.

She created the Trans Prisoner Alliance to support trans people in prison, and was the UK's longest-serving transgender prisoner at the time of her release.

She grew up in London in a large family and was neglected by her parents.

She was imprisoned, initially for seven years, as a young offender for kidnapping and torturing her stepmother's brother, which was extended to a life sentence for the attempted murder of another inmate who, she said, had repeatedly attacked her.

Born Alan Baker in 1969 in Brixton, South London, Baker grew up in Camberwell, South London, in a poor family, where her father had numerous partners; she was one of 14 children.

She alternated between living with her family and foster care.

She says she felt she was a woman trapped in a male body, and was regularly afraid of being battered on the streets.

In 1987, Baker's father remarried and in 1988 moved to Folkestone, Kent.

The Baker children were often not welcome at their father's new home, and lived rough on the streets in London.

In March 1989, Baker's father asked his children to trace their stepmother who had left home.

Baker, aged 20, her 18 year old brother, and two teenage male associates went to the stepmother's family residence in Thornton Heath, South London, where they found her brother.

They broke in, armed with knives, kidnapped the step uncle in a stolen van, and tortured him until he was released by police after almost 24 hours.

In September 1989, Baker and her brother were sentenced to seven years imprisonment in a young offender institution, with their accomplices receiving six years youth custody.

The first of what would eventually become 29 different male prisons over 30 years for Baker was Feltham Young Offenders Institution.

On 12 December 1989, while Baker was being held at HM Prison Swinfen Hall young offender institution in Staffordshire, she tried to kill a fellow inmate with a garotte an alleged child rapist who Baker said had bullied her, attacking her three times previously.

She was sentenced to life imprisonment for the attempted murder

In 1994, Baker's 17-year-old brother was killed while walking home from college.

In 1996, Baker began making art in prison; she could not get pencils because she had self harmed, but she paid for a cross stitch kit.

Baker spent part of her sentence in HM Prison Full Sutton in East Riding of Yorkshire, during the time serial killer Dennis Nilsen was imprisoned there (2003–2018).

She writes that they played violin and piano duets, and the board game Scrabble, which she says Nilsen cheated at.

Baker says that she learned to read and write in prison.

While imprisoned, she wrote poems and short stories, published two books, and contributed a section to a third.

She escaped from prison in 2007, and was caught after three months.

Baker says she learned to read and write in prison; there she published two books and contributed to a third, and created artwork that was exhibited after her release.

On 7 April 2007, Baker and another inmate who had been convicted of murder escaped

from HM Prison Leyhill, an open prison in Gloucestershire, where inmates had minimal supervision.

Baker's fellow fugitive was recaptured less than two weeks later, but Baker herself remained at large for about 100 days before being caught.

In 2008, Baker wrote that she forgave her brother's killer and hoped that the killer would "sort his life out for the better", since Baker also considered the killer to be a victim.

In September 2009, now in HM Prison Elmley in Kent, Baker wrote an article in Inside Time in which she said she loved prison.

She called herself a "professional prisoner", and said that she had so much freedom from responsibility that she never wanted to be freed or paroled.

She served 30 years in 29 different male prisons, during which time she came out as a trans woman in 2013, and cut off her own testicles with a razor blade in 2017.

Another pen pal who befriended Baker in prison tracked down Baker's mother, who then visited Baker in prison regularly until her death in June 2013.

On 8 July 2013, writing as Alan Baker, she published Life Imprisonment : An Unofficial Guide.

It was intended to be read by prisoners newly sentenced to life imprisonment, and comprised 41 segments explaining their journey.

In a long Acknowledgments section Baker "most of all" thanks her son, siblings, and mother, and a To My Victims section includes a long acknowledgement of guilt and apology judged sincere by a reviewer.

The foreword was written by Tim Newell, former governor of HM Prison Grendon.

It won the Koestler Trust Silver Award, and was reviewed by academic journals about prison studies.

After her release in 2019, Baker became a transgender rights activist and announced her intention to stand as a political candidate.

She was arrested after a speech at London Trans+ Pride in 2023, and charged with "commissioning an offence".

She was found not guilty of the charge, but recalled to prison because she was on licence.