Examining the blue line in the rainbow: the interactions and perceptions of law enforcement among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer communities

ABSTRACT

Despite the fact that LGBTQ individuals are at greater risk of victimization than the average citizen, the LGBTQ community’s relationship with law enforcement has been a turbulent one. Using a mixed-methods approach, including surveys, semi-structured interviews and observations of town hall meetings, and following the participatory action research framework, this study examines the interactions between the LGBTQ community and law enforcement, and the perceptions of police within the LGBTQ community. The current study demonstrates how members of the LGBTQ community continue to have negative experiences with police that adversely impact their perceptions of law enforcement. Moreover, the findings underline the importance of examining how multiple identities impact an individual’s experiences with and their perceptions of law enforcement. Expanding past research on this topic, this study offers an analysis based upon suggestions of the study’s participants of what steps must be taken in order to improve relations between these two groups.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBTQ community
• police
• race
• gender identity
• sexual orientation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. The authors use the acronym ‘LGBTQ’ to refer to people who self-identify with a range of sexually and gender diverse identities, including lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, transsexual, questioning, queer, intersex, pansexual, and asexual.

2. Initials are used in order to reduce the identifiability of the research site in order to protect participants’ anonymity.

3. The location referenced here is situated within a highly segregated section of the city in which the majority of households are identified as low-income and the majority of residents identify as Black.

4. Crenshaw (1991) underlines the needs to understand how a person’s multiple identities shapes a person’s lived experience. For example, it is not sufficient to focus on one aspect of discrimination, such as gender or race; rather, we need to recognize how gender and race intersect and impact how a person experiences discrimination because of both their gender and racial identities.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jessica P. Hodge

Jessica P. Hodge is an Associate Professor in the Sociology and Criminal Justice Department at the University of St. Thomas. She has a Ph.D. in Criminology from the University of Delaware. Jessica’s research interests include hate crimes, juvenile justice, and gender and queer issues in crime and criminal justice. She has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Feminist Criminology, Women & Criminal Justice, The Prison Journal, and the Journal of Ethnicity in Criminal Justice. Her book Gendered Hate: Exploring Gender in Hate Crime Law was published with Northeastern University Press in 2011.

Lori Sexton

Lori Sexton is an Assistant Professor of Criminal Justice and Criminology at the University of Missouri, Kansas City. She has a Ph.D. in Criminology, Law and Society from the University of California, Irvine and an M.A. in Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. Lori’s research focuses on prisons, punishment and the lived experience of penal sanctions. Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Justice, and is published in Law & Social Inquiry, Punishment & Society, Justice Quarterly, Critical Criminology, and Criminology & Public Policy, as well as numerous edited volumes.