Pubdate: Sat, 27 Nov 2004
Source: New York Times (NY)
Column: Editorial Observer
Copyright: 2004 The New York Times Company
Contact:  http://www.nytimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/298
Author: Brent Staples
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?137 (Needle Exchange)

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GETS REAL ABOUT SEX BEHIND BARS

Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent time 
in prison. The prison system now releases an astonishing 650,000 people 
each year - more than the population of Boston or Washington. In city after 
city, newly released felons return to a handful of neighborhoods where many 
households have some prison connection.

The so-called prison ZIP codes have more in common than large populations 
of felons or children who grow up visiting their mothers and fathers in 
jail. These neighborhoods are also public health disaster areas and 
epicenters of blood borne diseases like hepatitis C and AIDS. Infection 
rates in these areas are many times higher than in neighborhoods short 
distances away.

No one can say how many infections begin in prison. But the proportion 
could be high given the enormous concentrations of disease behind bars and 
the risky behaviors that inmates commonly practice. They carve tattoos in 
themselves using contaminated tools borrowed from other inmates.

They inject themselves with drugs using dirty syringes.

The most common source of infection could easily be risky, unprotected sex, 
which, despite denials by prison officials, is clearly a regular occurrence 
behind bars. A recent study of male inmates in several prisons, for 
example, found that more than 40 percent had participated in sexual 
encounters with another man. Most of these inmates, by the way, viewed 
themselves as heterosexual and planned to resume sex with women once they 
got out of prison.

Prison systems in Canada and Europe have tried to cut down infection by 
making condoms available to inmates. Prompted by research showing that 
sterile syringes slow the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug users, 
several countries have actually moved programs that supply clean needles 
right into the prisons.

Public health officials who favor needle exchanges in the United States are 
fully aware that this country has just emerged from a presidential election 
that witnessed heightened activism by conservative Christians. Indeed, even 
nonreligious Americans would prefer to see prisons shut off the flow of 
illegal drugs and provide addicts with treatment instead of syringes.

The condom issue, however, seems somehow less explosive. But as of now, 
condoms are banned or unavailable in 48 of 50 state prison systems, on the 
theory that distributing them would condone illicit sex. When confronted 
with public health data from abroad, American prison officials have 
blithely suggested that all the fuss is overblown - because there is little 
sex to speak of in jail.

Congress seemed comfortable with this fiction until 2001, when the Human 
Rights Watch organization issued a grisly report titled "No Escape: Male 
Rape in U.S. Prisons." The study suggested that rape accompanied by 
horrific violence was a regular aspect of American prison life. Based 
partly on the accounts of more than 200 prisoners in nearly 40 states, the 
report told of prison officials who stood by while sexual predators raped 
fellow inmates and sometimes sold them - as sex slaves - to gangs and other 
inmates.

The study led directly to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which 
sailed through Congress and was signed into law by President Bush. The law, 
which requires the Justice Department to collect data on prison rape and 
develop a national strategy for combating it, provided a much needed 
mechanism for weeding out sexual predators behind bars.

But this law is, at its heart, a public health law. It provides for grants 
that could be used to underwrite public health initiatives - including 
sorely needed studies of disease transmission in the criminal justice 
system. The law has already resulted in fruitful discussions about 
expanding disease testing and prevention behind bars.

Lawmakers find it easy to discuss prison sex in the context of rape because 
everyone agrees that sexual assault is horrible and needs to be rooted out. 
The conversation about consensual sex among inmates will be trickier to 
handle. Even so, the law will inevitably force prison officials to confront 
all the varieties of sexual contact that public health researchers have 
known about for a long time.

The commission created by Congress to oversee the new law is just getting 
started. But it has already brought some honesty to the historically 
dishonest conversation about sexual behavior in prison. Commission members 
who have spent time in the public health world, for example, are well aware 
that people who participate in sex behind bars do so for a variety of 
reasons. Some barter their bodies - and risk disease - in exchange for 
protection from marauding gangs. Others perform sex acts in exchange for 
necessities like soap, food and access to telephone calls.

Not all sex in prison, however, can be attributed to rape or bartering. 
Recent research suggests that some of it is consensual among lonely inmates 
who experience same-sex encounters for the first time - and for many of 
them, the only time - while in prison.

The new law is pushing some states to create new strategies for dealing 
with sexual assault in prison. But common sense tells us that sex among 
inmates will not disappear even if rape and coercion are taken out of the 
equation. That said, prison officials need to revisit rules that outlaw 
condoms behind bars. These rules aid the spread of diseases that flourish 
in prison - and then make the leap to the world outside. 
- ---
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake