12. LGBT Elders and the Criminal Justice System

By the end of the chapter, the reader should be able to:

Ten participants who responded to the announcement and invitation met with the members of the research team to find out more about the study and provided their informed consent to participate in the study. First, two ninety-minute focus groups were conducted with formerly incarcerated LGBT elders, with five participants persons per group. The focus group interview schedule consisted of ten open-ended questions that asked attendees about their experiences before, during, and after prison. One week later, each participated in a one-on-one 90 minute, semi-structured in-depth interview. All interviews were held in a private room at the principal investigator’s office building that was at a central location and easily accessible by public transportation. All interviews were administered by the principal investigators and two trained MSW students with personal histories of incarceration. The one-on-one interview schedule was divided into three parts that asked participants detailed questions about their experiences of self and community before, during, and after prison. The interviews were recorded using a digital audio recorder and were transcribed verbatim. Participants were offered a thirty-dollar gift card for their participation for each interview completed.

The qualitative data from service providers and formerly incarcerated older adults were analyzed using Tutty et al.’s (1996) qualitative data analysis coding scheme. The first step involved identifying ‘meaning units’ (similar to in vivo codes) from the data, that is, the first-level codes were assigned to the data to accurately reflect the writer’s exact words (e.g., true self, homo-thug). Next, second-level coding and first-level ‘meaning units’ were sorted and placed in their respective categories (e.g., ‘going in’ or ‘coming out’ of prison). A constant comparative strategy was used to ensure that meaning unit codes were classified by similarities and differences and carefully analyzed for relationships, themes, and patterns. The categories were examined for meaning and interpretation. A conceptually clustered diagram was constructed to detect patterns and themes and develop a process model (Miles and Huberman 1994).

Phase Two: Phase two was a participatory action documentary project. A collaborative partnership was formed by the research team and formerly incarcerated LGBT volunteers to design and implement the project to increase public awareness and combat societal stigma. The LGBT elders were especially concerned about the invisibility and lack of culturally responsive services for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated LGBT elders. Ron Levine, a social documentary photographer and creator of the ‘Prisoners of Age’ project, was recruited to be a part of the team. The ‘Prisoners of Age’ project has been an ongoing is a series of photographs and interviews with elderly inmates and corrections personnel conducted in prisons both in the USA and Canada since 1996. A photograph of an elder transgender person in prison can be found in the chapter appendix (See Image 12.1). The exhibit is designed to play a role in stimulating social and institutional change by addressing the issues of social justice and human dignity through images and interviews. The photograph exhibits have been shown internationally.

For the first round of recruitment, three formerly incarcerated LGBT elders agreed to participate in a short documentary project. The participants signed a release form for their photographs and interview excerpts to be used for the documentary project. The 90-min interviews were shot with a Canon 5D mark II camera and 50- and 85-mm lenses. Sound was direct to film using a RODE shotgun microphone attached to the flash plate. During the shooting, the filmmaker asked the participants to describe their past and current experiences, and future goals. The footage was edited to be a 5-min documentary short.

An overarching theme ‘self and the social mirror,’ emerged from data about that described their lifelong process of managing the ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ prisons of oppression, social stigma, and criminal justice involvement. Self in the social mirror was defined as a dynamic personal, interpersonal, and historical process that involved the mutual reflection (or deflection) of participants’ diverse selves with family and friends and society. Many participants described a lifelong process of integrating aspects of their social identities or location that were commonly subject to bias, discrimination, and violence. Many participants viewed themselves by one or more of following identities (or social location): being a racial/ethnic minority, older, HIV positive, LGBT, formerly incarcerated with a mental health and/or substance diagnosis, occupational status and income, and geographic location. Participants shared their views on how they multiple social identities or locations, such as race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, or their serious mental health status. When asked to ‘tell me about yourself,’ participants commonly identified themselves as LGBT and then added one or more other aspects of themselves.

I am an African-American female, 55, um, what else do I want to say. Um, I’m presently unemployed. I was incarcerated for like six years on a drug charge. Um, and um, it wasn’t easy, but I’m okay now.

I’m a lesbian um, presently. I’m not in any committed relationship or anything like that and um, well. I’m presently doing, I’m focusing on my recovery you know and just trying to stay in the community.

Um, Latino and I’m LGBT, GQ. And I did sixteen years in prison for manslaughter and I learned a lot in prison. It took me time to learn about myself. I was a closet gay person, didn’t want nobody to know who I was, and I’m learning how to live life, and I’m in a relationship for six years, and I love myself today.

I did ten years, six months in prison. I am a gay male. I’m in a committed relationship for the last six years. Um, I’m presently working in the mental health field in a psychosocial club and advocacy program for LGBT members. Um, helping to be a liaison between their therapist and the support they receive. Um, one of the things that um, I’m trying to do after coming out of prison for so long is to establish a working relationship um, and being a productive person.

Participants commonly reported that they faced challenges to developing a strong sense of self and a relationship to their families and communities. Social stigma was described as a communicable disease in which some participants developed immunity to external oppressive attitudes and practices. Some feedbacks seemed to accurately mirror and support the expression of their ‘true selves.’ Other feedback was potentially obstructive to that expression. Many participants described a multi-dimensional ‘coming out’ and self-acceptance process, which included being LGBT. Social and historical circumstances influenced how they negotiated this identity before, during, and after prison. One 55-year-old formerly incarcerated woman shared the following:

Well, no, well I don’t know if it’s me, but I personally don’t care how a person feels about me. You understand what I’m saying. My attitude is that if you don’t like what I represent, don’t, don’t, you know, don’t say nothing to me. I can keep it moving and that’s it and that’s all so nobody, I never got approached on that but I’m quite sure you know, it would whatever but I never personally got approached about it so as far as me being LGBT and being incarcerated, it wasn’t a problem for me.

Another participant described how he was always prepared to protect himself and vocalize his rights, especially to culturally incompetent community professionals and service providers.

You have to put your guards up in every way possible that’s going to help you to get ahead, being gay for me, HIV positive, black, you know, a whole lot of stuff, you know. So, you have to set up certain things that are going to defend you along the way. Otherwise you’re going to get swallowed up. I’m not just accepting anything but capable of advocating for myself, especially when I need affirming program services. If you can’t advocate, that becomes a stumbling block.

Many participants shared their earlier life experiences in which mirroring from families, peers, and communities varied concerning how they chose to share one or more of their ‘intersectional’ aspects of self. It is important to understand that identity is comprised of many different facets, including, but not limited to, our biological sex, gender identity and expression, sexual identity, class, race, and age. We make choices throughout our lives to express or hide these aspects of ourselves. Ward (2008) has shown that race, class, gender, and sexuality are important in structuring our identity and that examining our sexuality is integral to viewing the intersectionality of the many facets of self. Being HIV positive, having a serious mental health illness, or being LGBT and engaging in criminal behavior are often selectively disclosed to families, peers, and other social circles.

Being HIV Positive: By immediate family, like my mother, father, sister, and brother, I know and they all know my HIV status. Uh, my father, I haven’t really told my status, you know, um. You know, even though I know he would love me because I’m his son and, and he would just, I mean, he wouldn’t have a choice, but I just don’t feel comfortable coming out telling him that I’m HIV positive. I brought it to my mother’s attention, and my mother, she’s like, she says, no, don’t tell him, you know, and I don’t know why, but I just keep, we’re just keeping that a secret. But everybody else knows. My brother knows. My sister knows. My aunt knows, you know.

Being Diagnosed with a Mental Illness: Growing up, my family wasn’t really cool with being mentally ill so I couldn’t be mentally ill. I was not able to go to a psychiatrist. I was not able to take medication, and I was damn sure not able to talk about how I felt or what was going on. So, I self-medicated with drugs. The voices were getting loud, drink a little bit more, smoke a little bit more.

Most of the time voluntary um, but a lot of the times involuntary because my mother had to put me there. I can’t even count. Let’s say 30 times from the age of 26 to 35. I think I went to the psych hospital, about two or three times a year for like 10 to 12 years.

Being Gay and Engaging in Violent Behavior: That they all knew my name in jail. One guard, her name was R, said yo, R’s back. I used to stay in the lock up a lot and she would ask, ‘Like are you sure you are a homo?’ The officers used to tease me like how could a homo be doing all this. Homos don’t do this.

The legal system itself may have imposed discrimination prior to actually being sentenced and entering prison. Individuals may be exposed to the personal feelings or biases of the police, lawyer, or judge who impacts their treatment and sentencing. Participants described prison as a mixed experience of self in their social mirror. All participants acknowledged the cruelty of prison, especially for LGBT persons. Yet, despite the conditions of confinement, participants also acknowledged that they could use their time to gain greater insight and clarity about themselves and take accountability for their crimes. Many participants provided a thick description of the grave and dangerous social conditions of confinement, especially for gay men and transgender persons in men’s prisons compared to lesbian, bisexual, or transgender person in a women’s prison. As participants described below, the culture of prison was full of systemic bias and discrimination that limited their access to rehabilitative services and basic safety and protections.

It was like this in jail, if you are male and gay so you should like it, you know. So um, it was really hard to go through that and try to deal with the day, you know, and days were long, you know. You were up at 7, you know, and even your time locked in your cell wasn’t a safe time, because if they wanted you, they could tell a CO to crack your cell and they would run in on you. You know it was really frightening. It was hard to get yourself mentally ready for the morning because you never knew what was going to happen that day, and that’s a real terrible feeling like, what’s going to happen to me today. Every day was like, I got to keep up. I got to keep up. I got to look left. I got to look right because people were just being abused all throughout my stay, and the LGBT was just assaulted so many times on a regular basis. Everyone got it, but the LGBT men, they just you know, they were washing and underwears and anything their parents sent them or friends sent them, they would take them you know and they would make them cook for them and wash their pots. It was just frightening.

The CO’s didn’t care about anything. They watched gay people get raped. They would walk the tier and see you being raped in your cell or being beaten in your cell, and they would keep on walking, you know. Um, they would see you get beat and raped in the shower room, and they wouldn’t say anything, and when you needed help to cry out to the CO, it was like crying out to air, you know, because they weren’t going to do anything.

For phase two, the first filming took place in Bedford-Stuyvesant in April 2014. The three volunteers, Randy, Mark, and Dwon, identified themselves as formerly incarcerated LGBT elders who had spent most of their recent prison sentences at Sing-Sing Correctional Facilitate in upstate New York. Recently, Randy and Mark were legally married under New York State law. The photograph and interview session lasted about an hour and a half. An excerpt of the interview transcript can be found in Table 12.1 in the chapter appendix, and photographs can be found in Images 12.2 and 12.3 in the appendix. The final short documentary was edited down to 5 minutes by Mr. Levine. In the interviews, Randy spoke about his life before prison and his life within the penitentiary, emphasizing his experiences as a gay man within the prison system. He talked generally about survival in prison and specifically about his survival techniques as a member of the LGBT community in prison, his coping skills, and his own personal experiences. Mark appeared to be shy and spoke minimally about his experiences. Dwon discussed his experiences living his life on the ‘down low,’ and about hiding his homosexual identity by dating both men and women in the past. He emphasized his wish to find a life mate like Randy and Mark have done. The five-minute short documentary can be found on the Prisoners of Age Facebook page at the following link: https://​www.​facebook.​com/​photo.​php?​v=​1020421799903883​4&​set=​vb.​1493049016&​type=​2&​theater.