Rainbow Experiences of Interactions with New Zealand Police

This thesis explores the experiences of rainbow people and their interactions with the New Zealand police as victims, bystanders, and alleged offenders. Eleven rainbow people participated in semi-structured, qualitative interviews about their experiences of police interactions and their perspectives of police, specifically police image work. This research adopts a queer criminological approach to critique systems of power and their influence on society’s discrimination against rainbow people. It examines how cisheteronormativity, police image work and intersectional oppression shape participants’ interactions and perspectives on New Zealand Police. Three themes arose within the data: experiences as victims and bystanders, experiences as alleged offenders, and rainbow people’s perspectives of police. This research is qualitative and exploratory. Therefore, there is not a testable hypothesis or causative findings. Instead, it provides a glimpse of how rainbow people experience police interaction and the broader context, such as cisheteronormativity’s influence, of these interactions. Overall, while most experiences are varied, many are negative, and there is a contrast in the experiences and perspectives of victims and alleged offenders. Victims experienced harm, but most interactions meant victims felt the police were indifferent, or did not engage with the care they should have. Alleged offenders experienced negative interactions with physical and mental harm occurring during their experiences with police. At times, the police were also the cause of this harm. This thesis contributes to an emerging body of knowledge about rainbow people in New Zealand’s everyday experiences, including with the justice system.