Policing Diversity: Examining Police Resistance to Training Reforms for Transgender People in Australia

Abstract

Using field notes collected from participant observation of Australian police officers training to work with the transgender community, the current research builds upon previous work examining Social Identity Theory (Tajfel, 2010) to explain how one training program implemented to educate police about transgender people challenges police culture. This research determines that police culture, training procedures, and stereotypes of gender are equally influential on police perceptions of all transgender people. Overall, the results indicate that negative police perceptions towards police training reforms strengthen in-group identity of police, and negative out-group perceptions of transgender people.

Reactions of Law Enforcement to LGBTQ Diversity Training

“…Participants may display a quiet, or even silent refusal to participate fully in activities, conversations, small‐group discussions, or the training in general. In a study about training on transgender issues, there was a more general lack of engagement between Australian police officers and the training materials (Miles‐Johnson, ).…”

“…In a study about training on transgender issues, there was a more general lack of engagement between Australian police officers and the training materials (Miles-Johnson, 2016 ).…”

“…Such approaches to studying diversity training provide valuable information about the overall impact of the training, although they do not offer insight into employee reactions that emerge in the process of workplace diversity training. In contrast, Miles‐Johnson's () study of police resistance to training on transgender issues is more in line with literature that describes students’ reactions to diversity training in higher education settings, which also focus primarily on resistance to diversity training (Thomas & Plaut, ). Literature on workplace diversity training and diversity education in classroom settings have developed as separate entities, but may be useful in informing one another (King, Gulick, & Avery, ).…”

“…There are good reasons to extend diversity training to prepare law enforcement to work effectively with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) communities, including barriers to LGBTQ people reporting crimes (Kuehnle & Sullivan, 2003 ; National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, 2011 ), biased treatment of LGBTQ people by law enforcement (Bernstein & Kostelac, 2002 ;Wolff & Cokely, 2007 ), and evidence of hostility toward sexual minority law enforcement (Collins & Rocco, 2015 ;Jones & Williams, 2015 ;Lyons, DeValve, & Garner, 2008 ). There are, however, only a few published studies that investigate training for law enforcement on LGBTQ issues, and these focus on evaluation of training outcomes (Israel, Harkness, Delucio, Ledbetter, & Avellar, 2014 ) or themes that emerged during law enforcement training (Israel et al, 2016 ;Miles-Johnson, 2016 ).…”

Bias Crime Policing: 'The Graveyard Shift'

“…Diversity policing centres on the provision of specialised strategies to enhance service provision to marginalised and vulnerable communities (Bartkowiak-Théron and Asquith 2015). In Australia, diversity policing includes the introduction of multicultural policies, cultural sensitivity training and auxiliary liaison programs (Chan 1997;Cherney and Chiu 2010;Miles-Johnson 2016b). Such initiatives can make an important contribution to the capacity of police to respond to the needs of minority communities.…”