Protected & Served? 2022 Community Survey of LGBTQ+ People and People Living with HIV's Experiences with the Criminal Legal System

By Somjen Frazer, Richard Saenz, Andrew Aleman, and Laura Laderman

OUR VOICE IS OUR POWER: In 2022, Lambda Legal, in partnership with Black and Pink National, launched the Protected and Served? community survey. With this project, we aimed to learn more about the experiences of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ+) people and people living with HIV with the criminal legal system, to assess these communities’ levels of trust in government institutions, and to create a new resource for community members, advocates, policymakers, and researchers for LGBTQ+ and HIV liberation.

This report describes the findings of Protected and Served?. In addition to asking structured questions that provide a quantitative (numerical) account of the participants’ experiences, the survey also asked for qualitative data (open-ended questions); these answers were analyzed systematically, and the qualitative findings are included throughout the report.1 Protected and Served? focuses on the widespread harm caused to LGBTQ+ people and people living with HIV by the criminal legal system, including the adult carceral system, immigration system, juvenile systems, the courts, and schools. The report also examines intersectional disparities within these impacted groups of people.

Lambda Delta, 2022. 82p.