Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people and people living with HIV (PLWH) are overrepresented in all aspects of the penal system, from policing, to adjudication, to incarceration, to release. The high rates of LGBTQ people and PLWH in criminal and juvenile justice systems are a byproduct of legacies of criminalization, and continuing discrimination in employment, education, social services, health care, and responses to violence.

The policing of gender and sexuality pervades law enforcement and the operation of courts and the penal system. High levels of family rejection, homelessness, bias in foster care and social safety net programs, and bias in school discipline policies result in the disproportionate channeling of LGBT youth into the juvenile justice system. The policing of people living with HIV in the US exceeds that in the rest of the world combined, resulting in arrest, prosecution and incarceration. Today, 32 states and two U.S. territories have laws that criminalize otherwise legal behavior, such as consensual sex, when an individual is living with HIV.

The LGBT/HIV Criminal Justice Working Group (hereafter Working Group) is an advocacy coalition of more 40 organizations committed to criminal justice policy reform and advocacy on behalf of LGBTQ people in criminal justice systems. The Network is housed at Black & Pink.

The Working Group emerged from a year-long process of consultation, convening, research and policy development involving groups and activists across the country. The process was led by Urvashi Vaid, Catherine Hanssens, Aisha Moodie Mills, Andrea Ritchie, Russell Robinson, Dean Spade. It included organizing of a two day retreat of over 50 groups held at Columbia Law School in May of 2013 to develop recommendations for federal policy (especially agency) action.

The resulting report was titled A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People living with HIV, authored by Hanssens, Moodie-Mills, Ritchie, Spade and Vaid.

The Working Group was formed in May of 2014. From 2015-2017, the Working Group was fiscally sponsored by Just Detention, a member of the Network. From late 2017 to early 2019, the Working Group was fiscally sponsored at the National Center for Civic Innovation. In March of 2019, the Working Group became a program of Black & Pink.

In its its first 5 years of operation, the Working Group operated through a Steering Committe of members and subgroups organized around different thematic areas including: corrections (Federal Bureau of Prisons, and state prison systems and jails); policing and law enforcement practices; immigration detention; Juvenile Justice; HIV issues and HIV criminalization; prisoner re-entry and poverty; sex offender registry reform; sex-worker rights. Organizing support was provided by part-time consultants, who included The Vaid Group, The Raben Group, and individual contractors. Since 2019, the Working Group has been led by full-time staff at Black and Pink.

The Working Group has evolved into the national LGBTQ hub on criminal justice reform and abolition. It is a source of data and analysis on the experience of LGBTQ people in various parts of the criminal justice system. Members of this advocacy network offer unique expertise and are leading experts nationally on criminal justice policy issues facing LGBT people and people living with HIV.

• The Working Group worked with the Obama Administration to produce a national summit on LGBTQ Criminalization (Fall 2016).
• The Working Group successfully advocated with the Justice Department and the President’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing to secure recommendations that address police harassment of queer and trans communities.
• It initiated high-level engagement with the Federal Bureau of Prisons to change treatment of transgender prisoners, and to reduce the use of solitary confinement.
• The Working Group advocated for and created guidelines on LGBTI inclusive and supportive sexual health care and sexual health literacy programs in prisons and detention centers.
• It developed recommendations and a consensus statement to address criminal justice issues in the NHAS 2020 Strategy and Action Plan, and worked with the Office of National AIDS Policy (ONAP) to educate around the misuse of criminal laws against PLWH.

Policy priorities members of the Working Group have included: release of as many LGBTQ and other incarcerated and detained people as possible, through use of non-carceral justice interventions; reduction in funding and support for policing and re-direction of resources to prevention, treatment and care; education and organizing around the End Racial Profiling Act (which includes SOGI issues); education and organizing for the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act; advocacy for inclusion of provisions that address sexual orientation and gender identity and add non-discrimination language to all relevant criminal justice policies; reduction in over-policing of young LGBT people and transgender people; increase in the use of alternatives to incarceration; increased support for prisoner re-entry programs; elimination of solitary confinement; elimination of the bed quota for immigration detainees; end use of detention for transgender immigrants; repeal of HIV criminalization statutes (which are contrary to public health) and expansion of sexual health services.