Xavier Guadalupe-Diaz, “Disclosure of Same-Sex Intimate Partner Violence to Police among Lesbian, Gays, and Bisexuals,” Social Currents. 2015

Photo Credit: Ryan O'Donnell
Xavier Guadalupe-Diaz. Photo Credit: Ryan O’Donnell

Perception of the police is a heavily discussed topic these days. At the same time, police are often under-utilized when it comes to domestic crimes, such as intimate partner violence (IPV). There is, unfortunately, a history of police homophobia, which means that they are even more under-utilized when it comes to intimate partner violence among lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (LGB). This is the area of focus provided by Xavier Guadalupe-Diaz (twitter: @XGuadalupeDiaz) who analyzed data involving comfort of the LGB community in terms of disclosing intimate partner violence to the police. Xavier Guadalupe-Diaz is an assistant professor of sociology and criminology at Framingham State University who studies applied sociology, intimate partner violence, victimization, and gender and sexualities.

In his recent article, Guadalupe-Diaz analyzed data that was collected by a local nonprofit in the southeastern part of the United States. Through local nonprofits that served LGB-identified people as well as via media popular among LGB-identified people, participants were invited to take an online survey that asked questions about the respondent’s socio-demographics, their intimate partner violence experiences, and their comfort with disclosing information to the police. Some of the questions that they were asked dealt with if the respondent felt that law enforcement officers were sensitive to issues that surround LGB individuals and if the respondent felt that law enforcement officers were homophobic.

Guadalupe-Diaz identified three key questions for exploration in his study: Were there racial or gender differences in whether people felt comfortable disclosing same-sex IPV to the police? Were there differences in comfort depending on if the respondent was the victim or not? Were there differences in comfort depending on if the respondent had already dealt with previous police intervention in their own case of same-sex IPV?

Guadalupe-Diaz had several quite remarkable findings. White respondents were about twice as likely to report feeling comfortable disclosing IPV to the police. He also found that women were 1.5 times more likely than men to feel comfortable reporting IPV to the police. When analyzing whether or not someone would feel more comfortable disclosing same-sex IPV to the police, he found that if the respondent had previous experience with police intervention in their own case of IPV then they were half as likely to feel comfortable dealing with police intervention then someone who had never experienced police intervention.

Why are these findings remarkable? Because they confirm the sense that the experience of police reporting is not the same for all. Guadalupe-Diaz offers some facts about an understudied population. I spoke with Professor Guadalupe-Diaz briefly about his study, and he said… “Broadly speaking, the study takes into account differences by race and gender within the LGB community—something that is often times overlooked. The LGB community is a diverse one, beyond sexual and gender identities. Further, it shows us that that not only are historically marginalized communities, like LGB or people of color, are perceiving hostility or discomfort in police reporting but that they’re actually having negative experiences with law enforcement. This could mean all sorts of things: improper police conduct or that nothing came out of the police report for a variety of different reasons that can’t be known simply from this study alone.”

Molly McNulty is a CCF public affairs intern at Framingham State University. She is a joint Sociology and Education major.