‘It’s easy to mistrust police when they keep on killing us’: A queer exploration of police violence and LGBTQ+ Victimization

Abstract

ABSTRACT Almost 50 years after the Stonewall riots, queer liberation and police resistance are still inextricably intertwined. International hate crime statistics around the globe show increasingly high rates of LGBTQ+ victimization and criminalization by law enforcement. This qualitative research aims at evaluating whether queer theories of visibility and performativity could serve as useful tools to investigate the problematic dynamics between police and young queer individuals. For this purpose, online interviews were carried out with a sample of 20 young queer individuals from different European countries. Findings revealed that performing non-heteronormative bodies and behaviours is associated with being perceived as risky, dangerous and deviant. The correlation between queerness and deviance leads to a number of detrimental consequences, including police over-policing and criminalizing young LGBTQ+ individuals in public spaces, queer people underreporting hate crime incidents for fear of secondary victimization, and overall scepticism and mistrust towards the criminal justice system. Thus, this research not only affirms the importance of including queer voices in criminological research, but it also reveals the insidious nature of police violence against the LGBTQ+ community, which has long been neglected in queer studies.