Advocates call for end of discrimination to HIV positive prisoners

Human rights advocates are calling on officials in Alabama and South Carolina to stop discriminatory practices in their prison systems. In a new report released today by the ACLU National Prison Project and Human Rights Watch, researchers say prisoners with HIV face harassment and systemic discrimination. Prisoners are forced to wear armbands to indicate their HIV status, and are segregated in HIV units. They must eat and worship separately and are at a disadvantage in prison jobs and re-entry programs to help them transition back into society.

One former prisoner included in the study said that the results of being segregated can be traumatic.

"You haven't even begun to deal with it and you’re getting these letters from home and they’re saying so-and-so said they saw you and you’re dying. And you have AIDS. You’re in a building where people have AIDS. So you haven't dealt with it. You’re still in denial, you’re still in shock, you’re still in disbelief and everybody’s telling your story before you can say anything yourself or even come to some type of acceptance."

The study was conducted through confidential interviews, testimony and letters from prisoners. It also looked at similar policies in Mississippi, but the state announced last month it would end segregation of HIV-positive prisoners after it reviewed findings of the report.

Megan McLemore is a researcher with the Health and Human Rights division at Human Rights Watch. She said that prison officials must implement HIV-prevention policies in a way that protects human rights.

"The reality in prisons worldwide is that sex happens and drugs happen. When correctional administrators face those realities that’s when they can really make a difference to reducing the spread of HIV and Hepatitis C in prison, but not until they acknowledge yes there is sex in prison, yes there are drugs in prison."

The report notes that the World Health Organization and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care have both found that there is no medical basis for segregating HIV-positive prisoners.

And that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found no medical evidence for barring persons with HIV from kitchen or food-service employment, a practice still currently at use in some prisons.

To download the full report from Human Rights Watch: http://www.hrw.org/node/89476