JOUR 3190 // Final, Data Story
- Emma Korstanje
- Jul 11, 2017
- 4 min read
Suggested Headline: New Study Shows Shocking LGBT Representation in Incarceration Rates
Word Count: 998 Words
Recently, the American Journal of Public Health published a study showing that sexual minorities, specifically lesbian, gay and bisexual identifying people, are overrepresented in the United States prison and jail populations.
The study, one of the first of it’s kind with the newly available data, is pioneering the conversation regarding the overrepresentation of LGB people in incarceration rates due to it’s staggering findings. This conversation has revealed a solution combining research, education and simple compassion to try to tackle this long-suspected but now, for the first time, quantitatively observable public health disaster.
This study, titled “Incarceration Rates and Traits of Sexual Minorities in the United States: National Inmate Survey, 2011–2012,” was done by The Williams Institute, a “think tank” within the University of California, Los Angeles’ law program dedicated to researching public policy as it relates to sexual minorities. The study explored national prison and jail data collected in 2011-2012 and made available for the first time since the passage of the Prison Rape Elimination Act in 2003.
When looking at specifics, The Williams Institute found that though only 3.6 percent of men in the United States population identify as gay, 5.5 percent of men in prisons and 3.3 percent of men in jails identify. For women, there was a higher discrepancy, as though only 3.4 percent of women in the US population identify as lesbian, the study found that 33.3 percent of women in prisons and 26.4 percent of women in jails identify similarly.
When the institute did the math, it found that for every 100,000 LBG people, 1,802 will be incarcerated. For every 100,000 straight people, only 612 will be incarcerated. That is about a three to one ratio—for every three LGB people incarcerated, only one straight person will be in the same position.
These findings become even more worrisome when paired with other results of the study, namely that LGB people are more likely to receive longer sentences and experience harm while incarcerated.
Though shocking, the findings did not come as a surprise to all as those spoken to in the LGBT community seemed to expect these results.
“Well, I’m not surprised at all that that does happen,” said Kai Yost, a 19 year old film studies major at the University of Georgia that identifies as gay. “A lot of times queer kids, especially trans kids and just sexual minorities in general, end up homeless... That opens it up to people turning to prostitution, people turning to drugs, people turning to violence and gang crime. The correlation of that happening isn’t surprising to me at all because that’s kind of systematic of the problem as a whole.”
“We see, when I do trainings, drug and alcohol is two to three times higher in LGBT folks than their straight peers. Suicide, self harm, rates of incarceration and homelessness, especially for transgender and nonconforming folks, is much higher,” said Meg Evans, director of UGA’s LGBT Resource Center, of their similar thoughts regarding the results of the study. “I’m not surprised by a lot of it. I feel sad and disheartened...”
Both Yost and Evans noted the stigma that seems to follow sexual minorities in the current state of society in the United States, a stigma that can lead to negative outcomes such as alienation, addiction and homelessness. Unfortunately, this stigma and the consequences that result from it are not as well known outside of the LGBT community. For example, the results of the study carried a major shock factor when revealed on popular media websites, and were even a surprise to Ilan Meyer of The Williams Institute, despite his many years of work in public health.
“I was actually quite surprised myself. We didn’t expect this because this was the first time that we had data from a national sample of prisons and jails,” said Meyer, who received his doctorate in sociomedical sciences and social psychology from Columbia University. Meyer, a distinguished senior scholar at The Williams Institute, was one of the authors on the study. “It was quite stunning to see such a high incarceration rate for the lesbian, gay, bisexual people. That was, I would say, the most surprising for me,” Meyer said.
The study was clearly intended as a call to awareness of the issue and to prompt further investigation of potential stressors on sexual minorities that could lead to such startling results. The study states that an awareness needs to be had regarding the “circumstances faced by this uniquely vulnerable population.” All interviewed on the topic seemed to agree on this conclusion.
“Changing social perceptions of sexual minorities in general,” Yost said, is one way to help alleviate the problem. “There’s a very heavy narrative of urban life, people of color and the queer narrative involved with drugs that is in the popular media.” This stigma is so regularly observable through TV shows, in Netflix’s Sense8, for example, that people have stopped questioning it, which he notes as a definite problem.
“I would say that to do anything, we have to be aware of it. My philosophy is education and having conversations... how are we talking about these things?” Evans said.
Education and conversations, such as those facilitated by Evans at the research center, coupled with further research such as that planned for the future of The Williams Institute, shows hope in dissolving this issue. However, this heightened awareness and research does nothing if not paired with compassion.
“The reality is that this has been here and it will continue to be here until we put more weight into caring about folks that are incarcerated, who society often deems as less than, and caring about LGBT folks, who society often deems as less than, and caring about black and brown folks, who society often deems as less than,” Evans said. “Until we begin to do those things, this stuff doesn’t change.”
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