June 28 marks the 53rd anniversary of the Stonewall uprising in response to pervasive police violence targeting queer and trans communities. Five decades later, LGBTQ+ youth and adults are disproportionately overrepresented at every stage of the American criminal punishment system. 

For the past year, I have been conducting research around the needs of LGBTQ+ people who are incarcerated and detained, developing a toolkit of resources for AFSC and ally organizations. Here are some of the key takeaways from this project. 

Keyvan Shafiei is the Leading Edge Fellow at AFSC, a yearlong research project sponsored by the American Council of Learned Societies. Prior to AFSC, Keyvan completed a PhD in Philosophy at Georgetown University, where he wrote a dissertation about the cultural underpinnings of mass incarceration in the United States.