POLICING THE RAINBOW: LGBTQ PEOPLE’S EXPERIENCES WITH AND ATTITUDES TOWARD LAW ENFORCEMENT

LGBTQ people have faced a long history of criminalization and over-policing. Despite this history, there is little systematic social science examining LGBTQ-police relations. Such work is vital to understanding the contemporary lives of LGBTQ people and to increasing the safety of LGBTQ communities, which experience disproportionate levels of criminal victimization. Race has been at the center of current policing debates—and rightfully so—but this focus has neglected the powerful ways that gender and sexuality also structure people’s experiences with the police. Policing the Rainbow, Professor Vogler’s book in progress, rectifies this critical absence in social scientific knowledge. By drawing on an original, groundbreaking national survey of both LGBTQ (N=798) and non-LGBTQ (N=682) people and 59 in-depth interviews with a subset of LGBTQ survey respondents, Policing the Rainbow will be the first comprehensive examination of LGBTQ-police relations. The book’s innovative mixed methods design enables Professor Vogler to analyze LGBTQ experiences and perceptions both broadly and deeply. It leverages survey data to contextualize qualitative findings, while using qualitative data to give a rich human voice to survey results. No other study of policing and LGBTQ communities has been able to offer such a complete view into how LGBTQ people experience their interactions with law enforcement. This book will uncover not only foundational empirical evidence of police mistreatment against LGBTQ people, but also how those interactions unfold, how LGBTQ make sense of their experiences, and what consequences these interactions have for LGBTQ lives and the institution of policing writ large.