Lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) adolescents are about 40 percent more likely than other teens to be punished by school authorities, police and the courts, according to a study by Yale University researchers. Published in the January 2011 issue of the journal Pediatrics, the study is the first to document excessive punishment of LGB youth nationwide.
“We found that virtually all types of punishment — including school expulsions, arrests, juvenile convictions, adult convictions and especially police stops — were more frequently meted out to LGB youth,” said lead author Kathryn Himmelstein, who initiated the study while she was a Yale undergraduate. The research was supervised by Hannah Brueckner, professor of sociology and co-director of the Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course at Yale.
The study was based on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and included about 15,000 middle and high school students who were followed for seven years into early adulthood. The study collected details on participants’ sexuality, including feelings of sexual attraction, sexual relationships and self-labeling as LGB. Add Health also surveyed participants about how frequently they engaged in a variety of misbehaviors, ranging in severity from lying to parents, to using a weapon.
Add Health included detailed questions about school expulsions and contacts with the criminal justice system.
Himmelstein, who now teaches math at a public high school in New York City, said that adolescents who identified themselves as LGB were about 50 percent more likely to be stopped by police than other teenagers. Teens who reported feelings of attraction to members of the same sex, regardless of their self-identification, were more likely than other teens to be expelled from school or convicted of crimes as adults.
“Girls who labeled themselves as lesbian or bisexual were especially at risk for unequal treatment,” said Himmelstein. “They reported experiencing twice as many police stops, arrests and convictions as other girls who had engaged in similar behavior. Although we did not explore the experiences of transgender youth, anecdotal reports suggest that they are similarly at risk for excessive punishment.”
The study showed that these disparities in punishments are not explained by differences in the rates of misbehavior. In fact, the study showed that adolescents who identified themselves as LGB actually engaged in less violence than their peers.
“The painful, even lethal bullying that LGB youth suffer at the hands of their peers has been highlighted by recent tragic events,” Himmelstein notes. “Our numbers suggest that school officials, police and judges, who should be protecting LGB youth, are instead singling them out for punishment based on their sexual orientation. LGB teens can’t thrive if adults single them out for punishment because of their sexual orientation.”
Brueckner added, “The study provides the first and only national estimates for over-representation of LGB youth in the criminal justice system. We simply did not have any good numbers on this before. We need more research on the processes that lead to this to help us identify ways to make our institutions more equitable with respect to policing all youth, regardless of race, gender, or sexual orientation.”
Citation: Pediatrics Vol. 127, 1 (January 1, 2011)
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“Are those same teens also committing more infractions, which would then lead to the punishment?”
It took me less than a minute to find the study online:
http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/abstract/peds.2009-2306v1
And the answer to the question:
“Nonheterosexual youth suffer disproportionate educational and criminal-justice punishments that are not explained by greater engagement in illegal or transgressive behaviors.”
My personal study found that police had a manic fascination for harassing me in my youth frequently burning rubber in their effort to stop, what a nasty smell that is. Strange that they never disturbed the gangs of youth who also harassed me!
Seems 40 years on nothing much has changed except a new shift of bullies in positions of power.
There is not enough information provided in this article to allow people to form a rational opinion. The article claims that LGB teens are more likely to be punished. That’s only half of the equation.
Are those same teens also committing more infractions, which would then lead to the punishment?
If so, then the headline is misleading. If not, then that should be pointed out, and the author has a valid argument.
As a gay man, I feel for those students if they are truly being harrassed. I was harrassed, teased, bullied, demonized, and ostracized as a teenager. I know what some kids go through. But let’s have the whole story before anyone jumps to conclusions based on half the facts.
This is not surprising, at all. Prejudice against gay people was a social norm for a long time, and still is in many families and communities. Social norms control social actions. People who are taught a social norm, to be prejudiced against gay people, act with prejudice. They are taught to bully and hate gay people. No one should be surprised that they act according to what they have been taught.
Most of the people who are now judges, school principles, and police officers, were raised with that social norm. They were taught to be prejudiced against gay people. Many of them actually believe that bullying gay people, is right and proper.
Because of the same social norm, many gay kids have difficulty accepting themselves. So they find ways to avoid having to deal, emotionally, with their own sexuality. This leads to various kinds of maladjustment and misbehavior.
So we have kids who are having difficulty accepting themselves, and who act out to avoid dealing with that issue. And we have adults who are taught to be prejudiced against those same kids.
No one should be surprised that some of those kids get in trouble, or that they are more likely to be punished. No one should be surprised that many of them attempt suicide, or that some of those suicide attempts are successful.
The way to prevent those outcomes is blindingly obvious.
OMG! I can’t believe what I am reading. Subliminal prejudice from authority figures is beyond disgusting, but not too surprising. Alot of adults in authority have never explored their true feelings about these kids. I wish we could give them all personality tests and if they scored as having negative beliefs about LGB youth they should get out of their professions. We don’t need them. They won’t admit that they have these beliefs because they never consciously think these thoughts. But put these kids in front of them (classroom, traffic stop, etc.) and the negative biases invade their thinking and the poor kids are victims again. This is a good first step to scientifically look at institutional bullying by adults in authority to LGB youth.