Compensating for Sexual Identity: How LGB and Heterosexual Australian Police Officers Perceive Policing of LGBTIQ+ People

Police officers are highly criticized for their differential policing of people categorized by identity. One such group who has experienced differential policing is the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and queer (LGBTIQ+) community. Contributing new knowledge to the extant policing literature regarding intersectional identities of Australian police officers and perceptions of policing, this research applies Social Identity Theory to understand differences between lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender and heterosexual self-identified general-duties police officers (N = 349) and policing of LGBTIQ+ people. Using an online survey, results suggest the sexual identity of a general-duties police officer does shape perceptions of policing of LGBTIQ+ people. Furthermore, there are distinct differences in the way heterosexual and lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) self-identified officers perceive police engagement with LGBTIQ+ people, with LGB and heterosexual self-identified officers equally compensating for their sexual identity in terms of policing LGBTIQ+ people and distancing themselves from the LGBTIQ+ community.

• Publication year

  2019

• Venue

  Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

• Publication date

  2019-12-14

• Fields of study

  Sociology, Psychology

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.1177/1043986219894431
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

• Police research, officer surveys, and response rates

  2019cited by this paper
• Assessing LGBT People’s Perceptions of Police Legitimacy

  2019cited by this paper
• Perceptions of the Police by LGBT Communities

  2018cited by this paper
• Police recruits and perceptions of trust in diverse groups

  2018cited by this paper
• Workplace experiences of gay and lesbian criminal justice officers in the United States: a qualitative investigation of officers attending a LGBT law enforcement conference

  2018cited by this paper
• Police perceptions of prejudice: how police awareness training influences the capacity of police to assess prejudiced motivated crime

  2018cited by this paper
• Minority representation in policing and racial profiling

  2017cited by this paper
• Reporting Victimisation to LGBTI (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex) Police Liaison Services: A mixed methods study across two Australian states

  2017cited by this paper
• Perceptions of group value: how Australian transgender people view policing

  2016influential reference
• LGBTQ-Affirming Policing: Tactics Generated by Law Enforcement Personnel

  2016influential reference
• Dysfunctional Attitudes and Affective Responses to Daily Stressors: Separating Cognitive, Genetic, and Clinical Influences on Stress Reactivity

  2015cited by this paper
• Discrimination and Harassment by Law Enforcement Officers in the LGBT Community

  2015cited by this paper
• Who Forgot Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Police Officers? Findings from a National Survey

  2015influential reference
• From exclusion to inclusion

  2015cited by this paper
• Policing the Lesbian and Gay Community: The Perceptions of Lesbian and Gay Police Officers

  2014cited by this paper
• Ingroup favoritism in cooperation: a meta-analysis.

  2014cited by this paper
• Outcomes and expectations in dilemmas of trust

  2014cited by this paper
• Trust, conflict, and cooperation: a meta-analysis.

  2013cited by this paper
• Special Thematic Section on " Societal Change " When Inequality Fails : Power , Group Dominance , and Societal Change

  2013cited by this paper
• Heterosexuals’ Attitudes Toward Transgender People: Findings from a National Probability Sample of U.S. Adults

  2013cited by this paper
• Against the Rules: Synthesizing Types and Processes of Bureaucratic Rule-Breaking

  2013cited by this paper
• Confidence and Trust in Police: How Sexual Identity Difference Shapes Perceptions of Police

  2013influential reference
• Gay Officers In Their Midst: Heterosexual Police Employees' Anticipation of the Consequences for Coworkers Who Come Out

  2012cited by this paper
• Police Education in a University Setting: Emerging Cultures and Attitudes

  2012cited by this paper
• Representative Bureaucracy: Assessing the Evidence on Active Representation

  2011cited by this paper
• Procedural justice during police-citizen encounters: The effects of process-based policing on citizen compliance and demeanor

  2011cited by this paper
• Seeing like a citizen: field experiments in ‘community intelligence‐led policing’

  2009cited by this paper
• Coming forward: the underreporting of heterosexist violence and same sex partner abuse in Victoria

  2008cited by this paper
• Black or Blue: Racial Profiling and Representative Bureaucracy

  2008cited by this paper
• Rendering Visible the Invisible: Police Discretion, Professionalism and Decision-making

  2007cited by this paper
• “To Protect and to Serve?”: An Exploration of Police Conduct in Relation to the Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Community

  2007cited by this paper
• Diversity in Blue

  2003cited by this paper
• LGBT Identity, Violence, and Social Justice: The Psychological Is Political

  2003cited by this paper
• Lavender and Blue

  2002cited by this paper
• Othering: toward an understanding of difference.

  2000cited by this paper
• Social Groups and Identities: Developing the Legacy of Henri Tajfel

  1996cited by this paper
• Social identity and intergroup relations

  1985cited by this paper
• Social psychology : an introduction

  1976cited by this paper

• Perception in Uniform: A Study of Police Attitudes towards the Transgender Community in Pakistan

  2024cites this paper
• Attitudes of Newly Recruited Icelandic Police Students Towards Diversity

  2024cites this paper
• A Bibliometric Analysis of the Research on Social Attitudes Towards LGBT Community (2002–2022)

  2023cites this paper
• The (in-)visibility of difference: gay and lesbian identities and the German police

  2023cites this paper
• Recruitment, deployment, promotion, and attrition of female officers: The impact on staffing and perceptions of police practice

  2023cites this paper
• Perception in Uniform: A Study of Police Attitudes towards the Transgender Community in Pakistan

  2023cites this paper
• Sexual and Gender Minorities’ Positive and Negative Experiences with Law Enforcement

  2022cites this paper
• ‘Rorting the System’: Police Detectives, Diversity, and Workplace Advantage

  2022cites this paper
• Religious policing: how religion and level of religiosity shape officer’s interaction with minority groups

  2022cites this paper
• “Being Diverse and Being Included, Don’t Go Together in Policing”—Diversity, Inclusion, and Australian Constables

  2022influential citation
• Policing Minority Communities: How Perception of Engagement and Level of “Awareness” Influence Officer Attitudes toward Practice

  2021influential citation
• Comparative perceptions: how female officers in two Australian police organizations view policing of diverse people

  2020cites this paper
• ACCOUNTING FOR COMPLEXITIES: AN INTERSECTIONAL APPROACH TO ENHANCING POLICE PRACTITIONER ACCOUNTABILITY, LEGITIMACY & SUSTAINABLE REFORM

  year unknowncites this paper