Prisoners and HIV

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses the problem of the spreading of HIV and AIDS within prison walls. It states that prisoners are entitled to the same basic Constitutional rights as everyone else, but often don't receive them. The writer cites claims that unfit sanitary conditions and no access to specific medical treatment are helping to spread this disease and discusses ways that this phenomenon can be reversed.

I. Analyzing the Problem
II. Setting Goals: Zero Tolerance for HIV Transmission
III. Designing an Anti-HIV Program
IV. Developing an Action Plan: Clean Needles and Condoms
V. Monitoring: Guards and Prisoners
VI: Evaluating Outcomes
VII. Implementing Policy

From the Paper:

"The treatment of prisoners causes few legal problems for the government of a dictatorship. A government that refuses to acknowledge the human rights of even its law-abiding citizens is not likely to show too many qualms about shoving its criminals into overcrowded and unsafe prisons "or even to worry about whether the niceties of due process were considered in getting the person to prison to begin with. But the rule of constitutional law changes all that. Because we live in a country in which the rule of law is for the most part respected, the police, the court and prison officials" and the rest of us as well must recognize prisoners are people who have broken the social contract. But still people like the rest of us. It is from this recognition of our common humanity that the belief in rehabilitation and the rights of prisoners to receive educational, vocational and other rehabilitative services arises. And "perhaps most important of all" it is from such a base of beliefs that arises the idea that an ordinary prison term should not be a death sentence. However, this last assumption is becoming less and less true as more and more prisoners contract AIDS while they are incarcerated."

More papers on Prisoners and HIV:

• Research Paper # 25927 : "After-Care Programs for AIDS, STDs and TB Inmates"
• Research Paper # 26414 : "Incarceration and African-American Men"
• Analytical Essay # 111977 : "AIDS in Prison"

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