LGBT People More Likely To Be Incarcerated
Lesbian, gay, bisexual and transsexual (LGBT) individuals are disproportionately incarcerated, mistreated and sexually victimized in U.S. jails and prisons, researchers say.
Just the proportion of women in prisons and jails identifying as lesbian and bisexual is eight times greater than the 3.4 percent of U.S. women overall who identify as lesbian or bisexual, they found.
This data came from a 2011-2012 National Inmate Survey, which interviewed a representative sample of people in U.S. prisons and jails. Their analysis found that rates of incarceration for lesbian, gay and bisexual people were 1,882 per 100,000. That is more than three times the “already high” incarceration rate of 612 per 100,000 U.S.
In total, sexual minorities — LGBT individuals or those who reported a same-sex sexual experience before arrival at the facility — represented 9.3 percent of all men in prison, 6.2 percent of men in jail, 42.1 percent of women in prison and 35.7 percent of women in jail.
Since the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics has collected data about the sexual victimization of inmates. Jails are short-term facilities that hold inmates for trial, sentencing or terms less than one year for misdemeanors, and prisons are long-term facilities that hold inmates and felons for terms longer than one year.
Sexual minorities were also more likely to experience solitary confinement and to report psychological distress, the new study found.
The data showed as well that sexual minorities were more likely than heterosexual prisoners to report sexual victimization as a child and to be incarcerated for violent sexual and nonsexual crimes rather than crimes related to property, drugs or parole violations.
In both prisons and jails, lesbian or bisexual women were sentenced to longer periods of time than straight women. Gay or bisexual men were also more likely than straight men to have sentences longer than 10 years in prison.
