{"id":16011,"date":"2024-06-04T11:12:28","date_gmt":"2024-06-04T15:12:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=16011"},"modified":"2024-06-04T11:12:28","modified_gmt":"2024-06-04T15:12:28","slug":"lgbt_incarceration","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2024\/06\/04\/lgbt_incarceration\/","title":{"rendered":"6 facts about the mass incarceration of LGBTQ+ people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\nAs we&#8217;ve <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2021\/03\/02\/lgbtq\/\">reported in the past,<\/a> LGBTQ+ people are overrepresented throughout the criminal legal system, from their high rates of juvenile justice involvement to the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC5227944\/pdf\/AJPH.2016.303576.pdf\">long sentences<\/a> they often receive as adults. While little government data exists about the over-incarceration of this group, research is slowly emerging that shows how a multitude of forces push LGBTQ people into jails and prisons at highly disproportionate rates. This year, for Pride Month, we gather a few of the most striking facts about the criminalization of queer youth and adults.\n<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b>Lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are more than twice as likely to be arrested as straight people &#8212; <\/b>and lesbian and bisexual women, specifically, are <i>more than four times as likely <\/i>to be arrested as straight women. Scant research exists about the causes of these disparities, but it&#8217;s likely that <a href=\"g\/blog\/2020\/11\/10\/women-drug-enforcement\/\">drug law enforcement,<\/a> laws against sex work, and the criminalization of homelessness are largely to blame.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<picture><source type=\"image\/webp\" srcset=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/lgbtq_arrest_nsduh.webp 1x, \/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/lgbtq_arrest_nsduh-2X.webp 2x\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/\/static.prisonpolicy.org\/images\/lgbtq_arrest_nsduh.png\" alt=\"Chart showing lesbian, gay, and bisexual people are much more likely to be arrested straight people.\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" class=\"featureimage tightfeature\">\n<\/picture>\n<ul>\n<li><b>40% of homeless youth are LGBT.<\/b> Stigma, conflict, or a lack of acceptance at home drive many LGBT youth onto the streets &#8212; funneling many of them into the juvenile justice system, where <a href=\"\/blog\/2019\/01\/22\/lgbtq_youth\/\">20% of the population<\/a> identifies as LGBTQ.<\/li>\n<li><b>35 states have laws against behaviors that can <i>potentially<\/i> spread HIV.<\/b> <a href=\"\/blog\/2023\/06\/01\/hiv_in_prisons\/\">These laws<\/a> &#8212; carryovers from the height of the HIV pandemic &#8212; punish people for exposing others to the illness even if no transmission occurs, and can lead to people being criminalized for simply having sex while HIV-positive.<\/li>\n<li><b>One in six trans people have been incarcerated at some point<\/b>, including <a href=\"\/blog\/2021\/03\/02\/lgbtq\/\">nearly half of Black trans people.<\/a> This is <a href=\"https:\/\/read.dukeupress.edu\/demography\/article-abstract\/54\/5\/1795\/167743\/The-Growth-Scope-and-Spatial-Distribution-of?redirectedFrom=PDF\">compared to<\/a> about 3% of the total adult U.S. population in 2010 that had ever been in prison, and almost 10% of Black adults.<\/li>\n<li><b>44% of trans people in prison have been denied access to hormones they requested,<\/b> according to a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.issuelab.org\/resources\/23129\/23129.pdf\">2015 national survey<\/a> by Black &#038; Pink. Denying access to hormone therapy is just one way that prison policies fail trans people, as we reported in a <a href=\"\/blog\/2017\/11\/08\/transgender\/\">2017 briefing.<\/a><\/li>\n<li><b>85% of LGBTQ incarcerated people have been put in solitary confinement,<\/b> that same 2015 survey found. This is often done in the name of &#8220;protecting&#8221; queer individuals behind bars, despite the well-documented, <a href=\"\/blog\/2020\/12\/08\/solitary_symposium\/\">long-lasting harms of solitary confinement.<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p class=\"prelist\">\nReaders interested in learning more about the forces driving LGBTQ+ into jails and prisons may also be interested in these recent reports:\n<\/p>\n<ul class=\"list\">\n<li>Lambda Legal&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/static1.squarespace.com\/static\/62618573e937d62bddbf367d\/t\/646d326d98eb7343d67c91ab\/1684877933977\/Protected_and_Served_report.pdf\">2022 national survey<\/a> of 2,546 LGBTQ+ people and their experiences with the criminal legal system;<\/li>\n<li>Vera and Black &#038; Pink&#8217;s new report <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vera.org\/advancing-transgender-justice\">Advancing Transgender Justice<\/a>, based on a large-scale survey of transgender people about their experiences in state prisons;<\/li>\n<li>Our 2022 <a href=\"\/blog\/2022\/03\/31\/transgender_incarceration\/\">briefing<\/a> about transgender respondents to the Survey of Prison Inmates, including five data visualizations about the demographics of this group.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>For Pride Month, we gathered a few of the most striking facts about the criminalization of queer youth and adults.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,1],"tags":[59,60],"coauthors":[46],"class_list":["post-16011","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-shorts","category-uncategorized","tag-jails-bail","tag-women-gender"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16011","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16011"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16011\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16016,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16011\/revisions\/16016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16011"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16011"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16011"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=16011"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}