HIV criminalization statutes are antiquated

The state of Florida has legal guidelines that are used to prosecute individuals dwelling with HIV (PLWH) for non-disclosure. These legal guidelines are replicated and dwell underneath the umbrella of HIV criminalization — an unjust and antiquated use of insurance policies and practices primarily based solely on an individual’s HIV standing. The precise transmission of HIV is often not factored in prosecutions, even when the transmission is extraordinarily unlikely.

Also, present statutes don’t take into accounts condom use, HIV remedy, and even viral load suppression. These legal guidelines are used in opposition to individuals even in instances of biting or spitting, which are not modes of transmission. Disclosure legal guidelines don’t at all times take into accounts an individual dwelling with HIV and their proof of disclosure. Many types of disclosure are decided as not sufficient as judges and prosecutors add within the caveat {that a} PLWH additionally has to show that their sexual companion understood the disclosure earlier than a sexual interplay.

These legal guidelines had been written within the early Eighties when worry, hysteria, and lack of information had been all that folk used to create public well being measures round HIV/AIDS. This federally guided response to an epidemic result in PLWH being stigmatized, discriminated in opposition to, and criminalized in ways in which negatively impacted their lives. When you take a look at the HIV epidemic and the basis reason for HIV you see how this coverage concern intersects with racism, classism, and bigotry, and the way that negatively impacts the communities already marginalized by the epidemic.

These insurance policies proceed to disenfranchise ladies and Black communities (which are the 2 most impacted), different individuals of shade, LGBTQ+ communities, intercourse employees, immigrants/migrants, individuals who use medication and folks dwelling in poverty — and is one thing that may be modified by coverage reform. Criminalization creates stigma, and the understanding in public well being is that stigma and different social determinants affect the HIV care continuum earlier than a prognosis of HIV touches an individual’s life.

The existence of racism, poverty, homophobia, classism and violence by the lens of policing is what fuses the problem of HIV and criminalization. No analysis helps placing an individual dwelling with HIV in jail or jail as a manner of reducing HIV transmission charges. A lower in transmission charges through the years is attributed to the medical advances in prevention methods like PrEP and remedy as prevention methods like undetectable equals untransmittable. Knowing that these two main milestones within the response to HIV/AIDS remedy are missed in the usage of these insurance policies, demonstrates that criminalization legal guidelines work in opposition to public well being.

The influence of HIV criminalization goes even additional than that. Lots of people that gravitate to using these legal guidelines as a type of justice don’t take a look at what prosecution underneath these legal guidelines seems like, it’s all primarily based on alleged or unintentional HIV publicity. The media fearmongering alone is problematic when somebody is accused or charged with an HIV-related crime and their title, photograph, and typically their deal with are within the native news. The headlines are often clickbait or sensationalized to seize consideration and perpetuate panic and judgment. While most states which have these legal guidelines have a felony penalty, different states have the extra penalty of a convicted individual registering as a intercourse offender for all times, lowering alternatives for equitable employability and housing, together with many rights and freedoms.

Understanding all of the nuances of the problems round HIV criminalization has constructed a motion to create change for communities impacted by and susceptible to HIV. This has led to coalition-building, management improvement in communities of PLWH, and catalyze 12 states to modernize or repeal their antiquated state statutes. Collaboration in PLWH-led organizations has created coverage and justice institutes for studying just like the biannual HIV Is Not a Crime Training Academy.

These similar networks of PLWH outline how they wish to be described and the way their response to HIV must be designed by implementing the first-ever coverage agenda referred to as Demanding Better. Most lately advocates throughout the nation have launched and supported HIV Is Not A Crime Awareness Day, which is at present. Education is amplified by at the present time by speaking factors round assets like Five Things You Should Know, prosecutorial pointers, and case research that spotlight the racial and gender disparities in communities hit hardest by the criminalization of HIV.

Kamaria Laffrey is a Central Florida activist dwelling with HIV and serves as a spokesperson for Positively Fearless with Janssen Pharmaceuticals, works for the Sero Project and serves on the HIV Justice Coalition.