HIV Digest	HIV Digest Archive

View our poll archive

The growth in the number of African-American males in prison during the 1980s-90s may partly explain why, in just over a dozen years, blacks became nine times as likely as whites to contract HIV, contend two researchers with the University of California-Berkeley Goldman School of Public Policy.

Using the census and federal data of 850,000 men and women with AIDS from 1982 to 1996, Rucker C. Johnson and Steven Raphael saw coincident rises in black AIDS cases, especially among women, and the number of black men imprisoned. In 1982, 40 percent of prisoners were black, compared with 1996, when over half of prisoners were black. At the same time, new African-American AIDS cases rose from less than a quarter of all cases in 1982 to half in 2002, though blacks comprised just 12 percent of the population.

Prison remained strongly linked to AIDS even after other factors, such as crack cocaine use, were controlled. Other studies have found that half of all prisoners engage in homosexual sex.

Despite the link, safe-sex programming is not welcomed by prison authorities. In fact, "it's illegal to distribute condoms in prisons in all but one state" since legislators fear it would encourage homosexuality, said Johnson.

Editor's Note: from the Washington Post