October 27, 2006
CONDOMS NOT CONTRABAND
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After months of negotiations, a new version of the Philadelphia prison condom availability policy is on the verge of passing - if it does, the City of Brotherly Love will make condoms more accessible to inmates and save lives.
Philly Prison Commissioner Leon King's spokesman did not confirm the pending passage and only said the current policy has been under review, but AIDS activists there are confident it will pass.
"By the Philadelphia prison system putting condoms on the commissary list, it sends out the message to all correctional officers that these condoms are not contraband," said Waheedah Shabazz-El from the Philadelphia County Coalition on Prison Healthcare and ACT UP Philly. "They can't punish them for getting condoms."
Under the new policy, Philly could join successful condom availability programs already underway in state institutions in Mississippi, Vermont and the District of Columbia, and in county jails in Los Angeles, New York City, and San Francisco.
Across the country and on Capitol Hill, activists and policymakers are turning the spotlight onto the HIV/AIDS epidemic in prisons. The rate of confirmed AIDS cases is three times higher among incarcerated individuals than in the general population, and approximately 25% of people living with HIV/AIDS in the U.S. pass through correctional facilities each year. Preventing the spread of HIV in prisons is a matter of individual human rights and of public health.
Shabazz-El said, "Good prison health is good community health. Providing condoms to people who are incarcerated is not a moral, social or a political issue, it is a health issue."
"When an inmate gets infected, we're all affected," Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) said during an interview with The San Francisco Chronicle after a town hall forum she hosted at Merritt College on HIV/AIDS in the African American community.
In an effort to break the chain of infection running between prisons and communities of color, Lee introduced H.R. 6083, the "Justice for the Unprotected Against Sexually Transmitted Infections among the Confined and Exposed Act of 2006" or JUSTICE Act.
Lee introduced the JUSTICE Act earlier this fall, just after Representative Maxine Waters (D-CA) introduced H.R. 6038, the "Stop AIDS in Prison Act." Although Lee and Waters have supported each other's bills as mutually supportive interventions, the Waters bill focuses exclusively on HIV-testing and as a result, has been far more controversial . The Justice Committee of the House is will soon be considering both bills.
HELP PREVENT HIV IN PRISONS
~ Please Ask Your Organization to Sign-on ~
Join the list of organizations endorsing Rep. Barbara Lee's new bill in Congress for evidence-based HIV prevention measures in federal prisons. The joint statement is available at http://www.champnetwork.org/index.php?name=JUSTICE-Act.
To sign-on, send an email to sean@champnetwork.org with your organization's name as you would like it to be listed and the city/state where your main office is. Deadline to sign-on: November 10th. (The group, however, will continue to take endorsements.)
The following organizations have already signed-on:
ACT UP Austin, Austin, TX
ACT UP Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA
AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), Lose Angeles, CA
AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA), Los Angeles, CA
BIENESTAR, Southern California
Center for Health Justice, West Hollywood, CA
Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP), Providence, RI
Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), New York, NY
Housing Works, New York, NY
National Minority AIDS Council (NMAC), Washington, DC
San Francisco AIDS Foundation (SFAF), San Francisco, CA
Southern California HIV Advocacy Coalition (SCHAC)
The AIDS Institute (TAI), Washington, DC