Prison

I attended the UCSF Student AIDS forum this past Saturday (apparently I am allergic to spare time--what is this thing you call a wee kend, you say?).

Anyway. The first break out session I attended was on HIV in prisons, which is a complicated & (at least for me) painful issue to contemplate. Beyond the general fucked up-edness of our prison system overall, the AIDS prevalence in prisons is more than 3x that of the general population.

Since prisons in our country are designed to break people instead of rehabilitate them, it is unsurprising that they completely fail to provide adequate conditions for the inmates, let alone proper medical care (see Plata v. Schwarzenegger).  Which means prisoners with HIV/AIDS are almost certainly not receiving the care they need--especially now with all the budget cuts.

In addition to the already saddening high prevalence & lack of medical care, there are many activities that happen among prisoners that increase risk of seroconversion.

One of these activities is sex.

But condoms are controversial in prisons, and rarely distributed...because this is a population where sex isnt supposed to happen& to distribute condoms would condone & promote sexual activity--sound familiar, SXS 805? In many jurisdictions sex is a punishable offense, I'll give you that--but when 30% of the population is doing it anyway with such a significant HIV/AIDS prevalence, it just seems like adding insult to injury. The arguments that condoms would be used as contraband (for hiding drugs) or a weapon have not been proven by the data--and condoms have been available in most European prisons for over 10 years.

Education is also lacking--and so sadly, because with such a large & crucially at-risk population, it would be the perfect opportunity to use education as prevent--and hey, as actual rehabilitation, that could arm individuals with information to protect themselves & communities from future harm...

Oh wait, I forgot which penal system I was talking about.