Although male prisoners have a relatively high rate of HIV infection, very few of them acquire the virus while behind bars, according to a federal study that is the largest and longest one to look at the controversial issue.
About 90 percent of HIV-positive men in Georgia’s prison system – the nation’s fifth largest – were infected before they arrived, the study found. Over a 15-year period, 88 men became infected inside prison by the virus that causes AIDS, chiefly through homosexual intercourse. Georgia prisons currently house about 45,000 men.
The study, published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, refutes the widespread idea that American prisons are hotbeds of the AIDS epidemic and that incarceration contributes directly to the high rates of HIV, especially in black men.
The study revealed a surprising and unexplored aspect of HIV infection in prisoners. Of the men who became infected behind bars and admitted to having homosexual sex there, half reported that their partners were prison staff, not other inmates. Whether guards were the source of the infection or became infected themselves in any of those liaisons is unknown.
Nearly three-quarters of inmates reporting male-to-male sex described it as consensual, and nearly one-third of those said they used condoms or an improvised protective method.
“The popular assumption is that prison is a very good place to contract HIV infection,” said Richard Tewksbury, a professor of justice administration at the University of Louisville, who has studied HIV prevention strategies inside and outside prison. “The interesting thing about this study is that it directly contradicts that,” he said.
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