Last month, a national report from the Safety and Justice Challenge commissioned by the MacArthur Foundation highlighted the overrepresentation of LGBTQ+ people within the criminal legal system.
The report found that LGBTQ+ people are three times more likely to be incarcerated than the general population and more than twice as likely to be arrested than straight people. Rates go even higher among LGBTQ+ people of color, and the outcomes can be worse the younger you are.
The report was authored by Jane Hereth, assistant professor of social work at UW-Milwaukee. She says the goal of compiling this data was to highlight existing research in this area and share it with others trying to address this issue. Hereth explains that this report was part of a larger movement to devote more understanding and attention to the historically under-researched LGBTQ+ community.
The report showcases the statistics on how LGBTQ+ people fall into the criminal justice system and their experiences once they are in the prison system.
“Some of the other statistics that are included in this report are related to the experiences of folks after they've been arrested or incarcerated, which includes disproportionately high rates of victimization, including by prison staff and guards," says Hereth. "Lack of access to medical care, particularly transgender affirming medical care, lack of access to HIV medications, and disproportionate rates of being placed in solitary confinement.”
LGBTQ+ prison abolitionist organization Black and Pink conducted one of the largest surveys of incarcerated LGBTQ+ individuals according to Hereth. She explains that they found that a high population of these incarcerated individuals were forcibly placed into solitary confinement, but some had requested to be there for their personal safety. Hereth says that these high rates are due to particular policies created by various institutions rather than LGBTQ+ people.
“But often those are not policies or even individual decisions that are being made in consultation with incarcerated folks. And so it's really important when we think about policy changes that we think about how to include the voices of people that are most impacted by this issue, by people who are currently incarcerated and what feels safe, and what feels like what they want and need,” says Hereth.
The report highlights not just the experiences of those incarcerated, but the pathways that explain how they got there. Hereth says that through life experiences and patterns of oppression within the community, the LGBTQ+ population is more vulnerable in engaging in forms of criminalized survival.
“We know that LGBTQ+ folks are experiencing higher rates of many different forms of violence and victimization, including child abuse, intimate partner violence, and just sort of bias-related violence, street harassment, or other forms of violence being targeted because of gender identity or sexual orientation," says Hereth. "And often folks are criminalized for defending themselves against those forms of victimization.”
Hereth explains that the research shows that once these individuals enter into the criminal justice system, the harder it is to get out. She cites the school to prison pipeline as one of the pathways for the community’s incarceration. For example, school’s zero tolerance policies on rule infraction, having police officers stationed inside of schools, overtly punishing fights between students, and even school district’s decisions to outsource discipline to police all factor into these high rates.
“There's one other pathway that I wanted to highlight too, and I think it's a really important one, but it's related to overall how LGBTQ+ identities get constructed as deviant or criminal. Historically, we can tie it back to legislation and laws that punished folks for wearing clothing of the quote-unquote opposite gender laws that criminalize homosexual sex,” Hereth explains.
Hereth says that the association between criminality and LGBTQ+ identities significantly plays into LGBTQ+ incarceration and housing legislation. Addressing these larger issues that impact those with LGBTQ+ identities is a step towards lowering these rates.
“It's important that folks most directly impacted by this issue be centered in our research and in our organization and our advocacy efforts," notes Hereth. "So it's my hope that this report will draw more attention to this issue and ensure that we are thinking about the needs, experiences and these specific pathways as they impact LGBTQ+ folks within this broader work."
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