Are Sexual Orientation Disparities in Arrest Decoupled from Criminal Behavior?

• In Event: 30465 - Queer Criminology in Precarious Sociolegal Climates

Abstract

LGBTQ people in the United States face stark disparities in the criminal legal system including higher rates of arrest, incarceration, and police encounters. Multiple population surveys have also found that the disparities between sexual minority women and heterosexual women are much larger than those between sexual minority men and heterosexual men. However, little is currently known about the underlying processes that generate these inequalities. As a large body of research on racial disparities has shown, inequalities in criminal legal system involvement cannot be explained by differences in criminal behavior alone. Indeed, structural factors including police discrimination, neighborhood and spatial inequality, and social network effects can contribute to greater police contact and harsher treatment of marginalized groups. These structural factors decouple arrests from offending, leading to greater criminal legal system involvement among Black and Latine people than White people with similar offending histories. Leveraging Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition techniques, this study examines whether arrest disparities by sexual orientation are similarly decoupled from offending. My analyses rely on data from the 2021-2023 waves of the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) and examine sexual orientation disparities in past year arrest—both overall and by type of offense (i.e. violent offenses, drug offenses, and property offenses). The analyses account for differences in seven measures of self-reported past year criminal behavior (e.g. attack someone, illicit drug use, stealing). Results suggest that arrest disparities between sexual minority and heterosexual men are fully explained by differences in self-reported behavior and the racial and age compositions of the populations. However, sexual orientation disparities in arrest among women appear to be partially decoupled. Overall, 31.5% of the disparity between sexual minority and heterosexual women remains unexplained even when accounting for differences in behaviors and demographics. Implications for policy and future research will be discussed.

Author

• Kris Rosentel, Northwestern University