WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is offering $1 million in federal research funding to examine potential connections between gender dysphoria and violent crime, although existing scientific research has not established that gender dysphoria independently causes violent behavior and federal statistics show transgender Americans experience substantially higher rates of violent victimization than cisgender people.
The Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice announced the funding opportunity Oct. 9, seeking researchers to investigate violent offending among people with gender dysphoria, including potential relationships involving diagnosis, medical treatment, mental health conditions and substance use.
The solicitation acknowledges that empirical evidence on the subject remains limited, particularly concerning the underlying causes of violent behavior.
The initiative follows several highly publicized acts of violence involving individuals identified as transgender. However, individual criminal cases do not establish population-level crime rates or demonstrate that gender identity contributes to violent behavior.
The solicitation, titled FY 2026 Research on Gender Dysphoria and Violent Crime, calls for retrospective analysis of existing datasets rather than new data collection.
The agency anticipates approximately two awards. Applications are due Nov. 23 through Grants.gov and Nov. 30 through JustGrants, with awards expected as early as January 2027.
The funding notice states that the research will examine gender dysphoria, its treatment and the perpetration of violent behavior, with the goal of producing information useful to law enforcement agencies and criminal justice practitioners.
Among the topics identified are rates of violent offending among people with gender dysphoria, criminal convictions involving previously incarcerated individuals, potential relationships between diagnosis or treatment and violence, and the influence of co-occurring mental health conditions or substance use disorders.
The solicitation also permits researchers to examine the overlap between people who experience violence and those who commit violent offenses.
The research initiative comes against a scientific record that provides more extensive evidence about transgender people experiencing violence than about transgender people committing violent offenses.
According to a June 2022 report from the Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics, transgender Americans experienced violent victimization at approximately 2.5 times the rate of cisgender Americans from 2017 through 2020.
The report found that transgender people experienced 51.5 violent victimizations per 1,000 people annually, compared with 20.5 per 1,000 cisgender people.
The figures, drawn from the National Crime Victimization Survey, covered people age 16 and older and measured experiences of violent crime rather than criminal offending.
The report, authored by Bureau of Justice Statistics researchers Jennifer L. Truman and Rachel E. Morgan, examined victimization across sexual orientation and gender identity, including demographic characteristics, types of offenses and whether incidents were reported to police.
The findings documented a substantial disparity in exposure to violence but did not determine whether transgender individuals were more or less likely to commit violent offenses.
Gender dysphoria is a clinical term describing distress associated with an incongruence between a person’s experienced gender and sex assigned at birth. It is not synonymous with transgender identity, and not every transgender person experiences gender dysphoria or receives a diagnosis.
Research examining people diagnosed with gender dysphoria therefore cannot automatically be generalized to the broader transgender population.
One frequently cited study addressing criminal convictions among transgender people was published in 2011 by Swedish researchers led by Cecilia Dhejne.
The study, published in PLOS ONE, examined 324 people who underwent surgical gender transition in Sweden between 1973 and 2003 and compared their outcomes with matched population controls.
Researchers examined mortality, psychiatric hospitalization, suicide-related outcomes and criminal convictions during long-term follow-up.
The study identified elevated criminal conviction rates in certain comparisons, with findings varying according to the comparison group and historical period.
In analyses of violent crime convictions, a statistically significant elevation for the overall cohort was observed among people who underwent surgery before 1989, but not among those who underwent surgery from 1989 onward.
The researchers cautioned that the study could not determine the effectiveness of gender-affirming surgery as a treatment because it lacked an appropriate comparison group of transgender people who had not undergone the procedures.
The study also did not establish that gender dysphoria or medical treatment caused violent behavior.
The new Justice Department solicitation specifically encourages researchers to examine existing criminal justice and related datasets, including records involving previously incarcerated individuals.
Such research presents methodological challenges because criminal justice records may not consistently document gender identity or gender dysphoria diagnoses.
Studies relying on incarcerated populations may also produce results that cannot be generalized to the broader population.
Researchers must also distinguish between criminal convictions and underlying offending rates, which can be affected by differences in policing, prosecution and other factors.
The solicitation requires applicants to identify relevant limitations, define key variables and demonstrate the feasibility of obtaining appropriate datasets.
A Washington Examiner report published Oct. 26 highlighted several violent incidents involving individuals identified as transgender in connection with the Justice Department’s funding announcement.
Such cases do not establish whether transgender people or people diagnosed with gender dysphoria commit violent offenses at higher rates than other populations. That determination would require population-level data and appropriate statistical comparisons.
The National Institute of Justice’s solicitation does not require researchers to establish that gender dysphoria increases violent behavior. It calls for examination of potential associations, including the influence of mental health conditions, substance use and other factors.
The Justice Department has not announced findings under the program. Existing federal statistics show that transgender Americans experience violent victimization at approximately 2.5 times the rate of cisgender Americans, while available research has not established that gender dysphoria independently causes violent offending.
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