A study published last week in the January edition of Pediatrics found that lesbian, gay and bisexual youth are 40 percent more likely to receive punishment at the hands of school authorities, police and the courts.
The study, conducted by Yale University, included 15,000 middle- and high-school students who were questioned in 1994-95 and again in 2001-02.
Researchers found that “nonheterosexuality consistently predicted a higher risk for sanctions.”
LGB youth were at greater odds for police stops, school expulsion, juvenile arrest and conviction and adult conviction. Lesbian and bisexual females were particularly at risk.
The study is the first to document how LGB youth are singled out for punishment.
Specifically, researchers found that LGB students were one to three times more likely to receive disproportionate punishments compared to their rates of transgressive behavior.
The lead researchers, Kathryn E. W. Himmelstein and Hannah Brückner, noted several possible explanations for the findings, such as authority figures being less likely to consider mitigating factors including self-defense or immaturity.
Another potential explanation researchers suggested for the disparity was homophobia in health-care and child-welfare systems, where youth could be punished instead of receiving support, therapy or services.
Researchers also noted that youth “might report nonheterosexuality as part of a broad pattern of defiant behavior.”
Considering how gay youth have a greater risk of being bullied and harassed, it would seem unlikely that youth would self-identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual merely as a “pattern of defiant behavior.”
The study also asked students to differentiate same-sex identification, behavior and attraction, and found that sanctions were higher for youth who reported same-sex behavior or attraction, compared to heterosexual peers.
Some of the findings include the following:
— Females who have experienced same-sex attraction are more than twice as likely to be arrested before the age of 18 compared to females who never experienced same-sex attraction.
— Of the males who have been in a same-sex relationship, 41.6 percent reported being stopped by police, compared to 30.8 percent of males who had not been in a same-sex relationship.
— Females who identified at lesbian or bisexual were more than three times as likely at their heterosexual peers to have been convicted as adults.
The researchers concluded: “Nonheterosexual youth suffer disproportionate educational and criminal-justice punishments that are not explained by greater engagement in illegal or transgressive behaviors. Understanding these disparities might reduce school expulsions, arrests and incarceration and their dire social and health consequences.”