Data Sources Hinder Our Understanding of Transgender Murders

DATA CONCERNS

Scholars focusing on the experiences of transgender people have historically hesitated to specify the relative risk of transgender homicide because of substantial limitations of available data. The definition of transgender itself varies and can represent a very broad or very narrow category of people who defy traditional expectations of gender. Although this definitional issue may seem academic at first, it has significant consequences for how to categorize both murder victims and the estimated transgender population.

Of those two numbers, the size of the transgender population is better researched, although a fairly narrow definition of transgender is used. Current estimates have been derived from studies that use random sampling and include measures of gender identity that go beyond the simple binary construct of “male” or “female”^2–4 (although frequently only providing a third, “transgender” or “other” category). Some states have chosen to include questions about gender identity in national surveys, such as the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System,^2,3 that have then been extrapolated to create national estimates, but there are no systematic federal surveys that include questions to identify transgender people. These preliminary estimates will likely need frequent revision, because younger cohorts identify as transgender in greater numbers than do older cohorts.⁴

Younger people are also choosing a wider variety of labels for their gender identity (e.g., genderqueer, nonbinary) that may not be captured in questions that ask only whether the respondent is male, female, or transgender. However, gender identity questions will not be included in the 2020 Census, one of the best tools for outlining the demographics of the US population, delaying an official count of transgender people by at least another decade. Thus, although we have better estimates about transgender population size in the United States than ever before, those estimates should be used cautiously.

Although we are getting closer to an accurate idea of transgender population size, the issue of defining transgender has also plagued the tracking of transgender homicide, among other data issues. The primary method of collecting crime data at the federal level is through the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reports, a system in which local law enforcement agencies voluntarily submit crime statistics from their jurisdiction to the Federal Bureau of Investigation each year in aggregate form. Notoriously problematic because of the voluntary nature of the program and the various ways that laws vary or are interpreted across jurisdictions, the Uniform Crime Reports are also often assumed to be a significant undercount of crime. In addition, there are few opportunities for local law enforcement agencies to indicate that a victim (or perpetrator) is transgender outside the gender identity–motivated bias crimes category. Another federal data source, the National Violent Death Reporting System, has a best practices guideline for asking family and friends about a victim’s gender identity,⁵ but this method is currently considered a goal for investigators, not a standard practice. In short, there is no official national source of information on transgender murders.

Concerned about this gap, multiple NGOs have collected their own lists of transgender murder victims on the basis of reports from their networked agencies, newspaper accounts, and other sources of public information. Although these lists offer one of the few sources of information on transgender homicides, this strategy has limitations. Similar to problems with law enforcement reports being fraught with uncertainty about how to categorize someone as transgender, collaborating agencies may not share a definition, and journalists do not have professional guidelines for the systematic identification of transgender people for their stories. In addition to problems with victims being correctly identified, agency reports or news stories have to come to the attention of the NGOs collecting information. Considering that most of those NGOs are located in large cities, their lists likely have an unintentional urban bias. Relying on, first, networked agencies and journalists to correctly identify victims’ gender identities and, second, their stories to be found by or reported to NGOs gathering information on transgender homicides is not an ideal mechanism to track this significant issue.

UNCERTAINTY UPON UNCERTAINTY

Dinno attempts to address these uncertainties in both the number of transgender murder victims and the transgender population overall by providing ranges of possible murder rates on the basis of varying estimates of victim and population numbers in multiple combinations. Like much of the information available about transgender people, estimates or ranges are the closest approximations available. For example, the precise percentage of transgender people who experience discrimination or violence has not been determined. However, what can be said with confidence across studies with varying samples and methodologies is that there is evidence of worrying patterns of victimization among transgender people.

Similarly, Dinno found a worrying pattern of homicide of young transgender women of color that coincides with concerns expressed by NGOs and advocacy organizations across the United States. Not captured are the types of violence that transgender women of color experience, a phenomenon called “overkill”⁶ because the severity of injury far surpasses the violence needed to kill them. Also not explored in this article were other features of marginalization, such as economic insecurity, which can lead many transgender people into the underground economy and the additional risks that accompany that work. Because of the close relationship in the United States between race/ethnicity and socioeconomic status, it is also likely that the risks faced by young transgender women of color are closely tied with economic inequalities in ways that warrant future attention.

Dinno suggests that the most surprising finding, that transgender people overall do not face greater homicide risk than do cisgender people, is because of transgender people becoming adept at strategies to reduce potential harms, such as avoiding certain neighborhoods or being cautious around new people. Although research has found that many transgender people do employ these strategies that limit their freedoms in favor of safety, a claim that transgender people are successfully avoiding their own murders remains dubious. Because of the uncertain nature of both the numerator and denominator in these relative risk calculations, a far more parsimonious explanation would be that these estimates have substantial limitations and that better data and further research are needed to understand the relative risk of homicide for transgender and cisgender people in the United States. In that regard, Dinno’s work cannot provide a definitive answer to the “transgender murder rate” but instead provides a compelling argument for the advancement of more comprehensive data collection strategies to improve the safety of transgender people.