Police recruit perception of transgender officers: inclusion, diversity and transgender people

Abstract

Purpose

The reality of policing in the twenty-first century is that most officers identify as white, heterosexual and cisgender (or identifying with the sex assigned to them at birth) and outnumber officers from diverse groups. Whilst many diverse officers are employed by police organisations, there is a lack of evidence to suggest transgender people seek employment in policing or (following strategic recruitment drives) are actively recruited by police organisations. This raises questions regarding the factors which constrain or facilitate employment of transgender people into policing and whether strategic recruitment drives targeting transgender people work. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

Following a recruitment drive targeting diverse community members, an online survey was administered to police recruits in one of Australia’s smaller state based police organisations (n=742) to determine if recruits self-identity as transgender or cisgender, and whether or not self-identified cisgender or transgender recruits would be willing to work alongside one another.

Findings

The results indicated that all the recruits in this study identified as cisgender. Whilst transgender recruits may have participated in the research, none of the recruits identified openly as transgender in the survey. Consequently, there was a significant association between the recruit’s gender and sexuality, and their perceptions of working alongside transgender officers, with almost all recruits stating that they would prefer to work with cisgender officers.

Practical implications

The findings of this research contribute original knowledge to the extant body of policing literature regarding police recruit perceptions of working alongside transgender officers.

Originality/value

This type of research has not been conducted in an Australian context before.

Citation

Miles-Johnson, T. (2020), "Police recruit perception of transgender officers: inclusion, diversity and transgender people", Journal of Criminological Research, Policy and Practice, Vol. 6 No. 3, pp. 189-201. https://doi.org/10.1108/JCRPP-10-2019-0063