Appraisals of Crime and Control Agents

• In Event: Poster Session 1

Abstract

In a 2014 essay on “Queering Criminology,” Jordan B. Woods reflects on the wholesale failure of academic criminology to incorporate the unique experiences of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) people into the larger scope of critical scholarship (Woods, 2014). The absence of this inclusion from criminological literature and criminal justice theorizing – which remains too narrow – prevents a better understanding of and response to the needs of LGBTQ people to improve their experiences in the justice system. Using a cross-sectional sample of urban respondents in New Orleans, Louisiana (n = 405), the current project quantitatively assesses how intersections of identity influences one's: (1) fear of crime (FOC); and (2) law enforcement attitudes (LEA). Sexual and gender identity is disaggregated to tease out potential mediating and moderating effects on both outcomes, and the interlocking intersections between sex, sexual and gender-identity, and race are added to assess their roles in predicting FOC and LEA. The data show an indirect association between some intersectional identities and LEA via FOC. They also show that attitudes regarding police procedural fairness are associated with LEA. This study may provide conditional support for a vulnerability thesis to explain variation in both FOC and LEA.

Author

• Mathew Woessner, Florida State University