Not only does criminalization and mass incarceration disproportionately affect people of color, immigrants, and low-income Americans, the disparity is also apparent among LGBT people in those demographic categories, a recent study by the Center for American Progress found. The analysis noted that more than 7 percent of people in U.S. prisons and jails, identified as lesbian, gay, or bisexual. That is almost double the percentage of Americans overall who identify as such.
Francis Nichols is a pretrial-service officer in Washington D.C. For The Atlantic’s ongoing series of interviews with American workers, I spoke with Nichols about his job, the vulnerability of the LGBT community in the criminal-justice system, and how being openly gay in the law-enforcement community affects his perception of his job. The interview that follows has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
[For more of this story, written by Adrienne Green, go to https://www.theatlantic.com/bu...ervices-lgbt/506816/]
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