In 2023, California police reported 4.6 million pedestrian and vehicle stops involving people perceived as adults, including 17,916 stops involving people perceived as transgender or gender nonconforming. A new study by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and the University of California, Irvine, finds that individuals perceived as transgender are searched and arrested at higher rates than those perceived as cisgender, despite similar rates of contraband discovery among all groups.
Researchers used data collected under California’s Racial and Identity Profiling Act, which requires officers to record their subjective perceptions of every person they stop. Controlling for race and age, researchers examined how officers’ perceptions of an individual’s gender influence search and arrest outcomes during vehicle and pedestrian stops in California.
“Policing is fundamentally discretionary, and officers’ perceptions of the people they encounter shape all decisions, from whom they stop and search to whether a stop escalates to the use of force or an arrest,” said study author Jordan Grasso, Research Data Analyst at the Williams Institute. “Police often enforce normative gender expectations, subjecting anyone who is perceived to disrupt these norms—regardless of their actual gender identity—to heightened surveillance and punishment.”
Results show that about one-quarter of people perceived to be transgender men and women (24%) were searched, compared with 14% of those perceived as cisgender men and 8% of those perceived as cisgender women. Slightly more than one in 10 individuals perceived as gender nonconforming (11%) were searched.
Among the 576,735 searches in 2023, contraband discovery rates were similar across officers’ perceptions of gender. Contraband was discovered in situations involving approximately 27% of people perceived as transgender, gender nonconforming, or cisgender men, and in 26% of those perceived as cisgender women.
Despite similar rates, about one in five people perceived as transgender (men: 19% and women: 20%) were arrested during police stops, compared with 10% of those perceived as cisgender men, 7% as cisgender women, and 9% as gender nonconforming.