Focus on HIV/AIDS in Prisons
Although the prevalence of HIV among Canadian prisoners is at least ten times higher than in the general community, far from enough is being done to prevent the spread of HIV infection in prisons and to provide prisoners living with HIV or AIDS with adequate treatment, support and care.
Canada's First National HIV/AIDS and Prisons Workshop was held in Kingston on 18-20 August 1995. Two hundred prisoners and ex-prisoners, community workers and prison activists, health-care staff and correctional officers from federal and provincial prisons, and representatives from Health Canada and the Correctional Service of Canada (CSC) met to discuss the many issues raised by HIV/AIDS in prisons. The Workshop was organized by the Toronto-based Prisoners with HIV/AIDS Support Action Network (PASAN) and was made possible with contributions from Health Canada and CSC under the National AIDS Strategy.
The Editorial Committee decided to devote a major section of this issue of the Newsletter to the results of this Workshop and, generally, to the legal and policy issues raised by HIV/AIDS in prisons. We did this because the Workshop confirmed that, although provincial and federal prison systems have undertaken steps in the right direction, much more can and needs to be done. In particular, prisoners are still at an increased risk of contracting HIV in prisons, and those who are infected do not always receive the care, support, and treatment that would be available to them outside.
Living with HIV in Prisons: Living with Injustice?
To live with HIV or AIDS – or to be at risk of contracting HIV – in prisons means living with injustice.
Most people do not consider prisons as part of the community, but rather as a completely separate world with its own rules and regulations, where people are sent in order to be punished, not to be cared for. In reality, prisons should be seen as an integral part of the community, and everything that goes on in them will have an impact on society in general: prisons house people temporarily, often for very brief periods, sometimes repeatedly. Prisoners live in the community before, after and between prison sentences. However, most of society does not seem to care about what happens to prisoners and how they are treated. When attention was first drawn to the problem of HIV/AIDS in prisons, people focused:
• then, on the fact that prisoners could spread HIV outside prisons after their release; and
• only last, on the fact that prisoners themselves are at increased risk of being exposed to HIV in prisons and, when HIV-positive, of dying sooner.
Society still cares little about prisoners and more about what could happen if prisoners, infected and perhaps sick, are released into the community. In order to convince governments, prison systems, and the public that prisoners need to be provided with better care and the means to be able to protect themselves against contracting HIV infection, one has to argue that, unless we as a society do so, the public is at risk. In the eyes of many, prisoners do not seem to deserve care and compassion.
This lack of care for prisoners is wrong, unfair, and based upon prejudice. Prisoners, even though they live behind the walls of a prison, are still part of our communities and deserve to be cared for. They are in prison as punishment, and not for punishment. As the Australian Minister of Health pointed out, people are sentenced to prison, not to be infected. They deserve the same level of care and protection that people outside prison get.[1]
If governments and prison systems do not take proper steps, they "will stand condemned as irresponsible and morally negligent in the safekeeping of prisoners.[2] We owe it to the prisoners, and we owe it to the community, to protect prisoners from infection in prison: "This requires radical steps before it is too late. ... The infection of a person who is in the custody of society, because that person does not have access to ready means of self-protection and because society has preferred to turn the other way, is ... unpalatable .... As a community we must take all proper steps to protect prison officers and prisoners alike. By protecting them we protect society."[3]
- Ralf Jürgens
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[1] Cited in I Malkin. The Role of the Law of Negligence in Preventing Prisoners' Exposure to HIV While in Custody. See infra.
[2] M Kirby. WHO Global Commission, AIDS Recommendations and Prisons in Australia. In J Norberry, M Gaughwin, SA Gerull (eds). No 4 HIV/AIDS and Prisons Conference Proceedings. 1991, at 7, 19.
[3] Ibid.