Friday, September 22, 2006

No sex in prison, just HIV?

Would Texas save money on healthcare for HIV positive inmates by distributing condoms in prison?

Says Craig Malisow at the Houston Press: "Texas prisons say they can’t allow condoms because they don’t allow sex. So they don’t need condoms. They just need $12 million a year to treat all the HIV-positive prisoners." Statistics are low-ballled because of a lack of testing, but according to TDCJ:
there are 2,676 of them out of a total Texas prison population of 152,158. Nationally, the prevalence of HIV among prisoners is five times that of the general public.

As of August, 808 HIV-positive offenders were released from Texas prisons. Forty percent of all HIV-positive offenders released this year will wind up in Houston.
Why not distribute condoms in prison?

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Scott,

Good post. This is clearly a problem that many states including Texas have. The number of African-American males leaving prision with HIV, to spread to others, is alarming.

Dwight

Anonymous said...

Just african american men? how STUPID ARE YOU?