LGBTQ People
LGBTQ people experience domestic and sexual violence at rates equal to or higher than heterosexuals, but are much less likely to receive professional support in the aftermath of these traumatic and potentially life threatening events. Most mainstream agencies and centers aren’t reaching them and don’t have the cultural competency to serve them well.
To begin to address this striking gap in services, select LGBTQ anti-violence projects have been paired with a domestic violence center and two rape crisis centers in different parts of the country to train local staff. Small in scale, this project, which Vera is evaluating, is generating lessons with nationwide application. It has the potential to vastly expand the safety net for LGBTQ survivors that have been without help for too long.
Related Work
COVID-19 Adds to Challenges for Trans People in California’s Prisons
In prisons, trans and GNC people are subjected to harassment and violence by both staff and other incarcerated people. Because they are targeted in these ways, trans and GNC people are often considered “troublemakers” when problems arise. This means they’re disproportionately placed in solitary confinement, where their transition-related medical ne ...
Blog Post
AJ Rio-Glick
Advancing Transgender Justice
Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars
While transgender and gender non conforming (TGNC) people are extremely vulnerable to heightened policing, surveillance, and targeted victimization by the state, there is little research on the experiences of incarcerated TGNC people, and almost no policy explicitly protecting them. Upon release from prison, transgender individuals often find thems ...
Project
David Pitts
National Resource Center for Reaching Victims
Vera’s Center on Victimization and Safety is working to increase the number of victims who receive the support they need to help them heal by convening the National Resource Center for Reaching Victims. The Resource Center’s vision is that victim services will be accessible, culturally relevant, and trauma informed—and that the overwhelming majorit ...
Project
Nancy Smith
San Francisco's New Jail Unit for TGN People
The San Francisco Sheriff's Office is pushing forward with reforms to make their jails more inclusive to the transgender community. In this video, Assistant Sheriff Katherine Johnson details the intent of the reforms and two incarcerated transgender people housed on the new unit describe the impact of the reforms.
Gender Awareness Training for Sheriff's Deputies
Stephan Thorne teaches for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, where he conducts a gender awareness training for new deputies to increase respectful interactions between law enforcement and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender plus (LGBT+) community. The training is the first of its type to be certified by the California Peace ...
Improving Responses to Hate Crime
Validating a Bias-Crime Victim Assessment Tool
Vera is studying experiences of hate crime (also known as bias crime) among Latino, immigrant, youth, and LGBT communities in New Jersey and Los Angeles County, California. We aim to develop a practical tool to help communities and law enforcement improve responses to hate crime, with the ultimate goal of ensuring access to equal justice for people ...
Project
Laura Simich
Violence against the LGBTQ community extends beyond the massacre in Orlando
In the early hours of Sunday morning, a gunman murdered 49 people and injured another 53 at a shooting during Latin Night at Pulse, a gay nightclub, in Orlando, Florida. Forty-nine individuals, overwhelmingly people of color, whose lives were cut short in the very space considered to be a “refuge” or “haven” for the LGBTQ community. Later that day, ...
Blog Post
Karen Berberich
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Transgender people at higher risk for justice system involvement
While recent police brutality headlines have motivated movements like #BlackLivesMatter and #SayHerName, activism surrounding transgender people has been pushed to the margins in mainstream media. In response to police violence against transgender people, #BlackTransLivesMatter has made continuous efforts to raise awareness to the many transgender ...
Series: Beyond Innocence
Trans and gender non-conforming people of color need us to do more
K.C. Haggard, a transgender woman, was stabbed to death in Fresno, California in late July in front of multiple people who did nothing to help her. K.C.’s was the eleventh homicide of a transgender or gender non-confirming (TGNC) person reported in 2015 by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP). As of mid-September, that count has ...
New report shines light on domestic violence rates in LGBTQ communities
This month, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) released its latest report, Intimate Partner Violence in Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer (LGBTQ), and HIV-Affected Communities in the United States in 2013. The report provides detailed data on LGBTQ and HIV-affected, as well as data on police, medical, and other respon ...
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Charity Hope
Safety and the eye of the beholder
As violent crime rates continue to decline nationally, they have remained comparatively high in Chicago. Overall, reductions in violent crime in Chicago have been modest—dropping 9 percent from 2009 to 2010. That’s why the city’s recent 32 percent drop in homicide rates caught the national media’s attention in June. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel attr ...
Blog Post
Ashley Jackson
Supreme Court: Recognizing plea bargaining as the norm
In two companion cases last week, the U.S. Supreme Court held that criminal defendants have a Sixth Amendment right to effective assistance of counsel during plea negotiations. The impact of this finding is far from clear; however, it is likely to create confusion among lower courts and raise questions about how to fund this newly expanded interpre ...
Blog Post
Ram Subramanian