Courtesy of Flickr from D. Cuthbert
Barriers to Protection
The Dilemma of Condom Distribution in Prisons
In the majority of United States prisons, it is illegal to distribute condoms. The health implications of such a policy are obvious: the potential spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections both within prisons and to the greater community to which prisoners return after their sentences cannot be ignored. The prohibition of condoms in prisons is not solely an issue of epidemiology, however. It is a matter of basic human rights in health, primarily the right to protect oneself from a disease with a means available to the general population and recommended by doctors.
Sex between prisoners is a crime in the United States. Government officials therefore worry that distributing condoms or even allowing nonprofit groups to provide condoms in prisons may seem to condone sex and thus contradict the written law. Such administrators, however, condemn it in theory while accepting it as inevitable in actuality. Without stopping prisoners from having sex, they only take measures to prevent prisoners from having sex safely, demonstrating the extent to which these officials value public image over the well-being of the prisoners under their charge and even the greater health of the public. Meanwhile, HIV/AIDS infects the prison population at a rate three times higher than that of the general population. There have been few studies to examine whether prisoners contract HIV/AIDS in prison or whether this high rate is due to the demographics of the group, which makes them more likely to have contracted HIV/AIDS than the general population before entering prison. What is clear, though, is that a group of individuals especially vulnerable to this disease does not have the means to prevent the spread of it.
Some who oppose the supply of condoms in prisons claim that prisoners would use them as drug paraphernalia or weapons. An investigation on the effect of condom distribution in a New South Wales penitentiary over nine years found this claim to be largely inaccurate. In this study, prisoners did use condoms to conceal drugs but did not use them to assist in the act of intravenous drug use. Furthermore, there were only three instances in which condoms were used as weapons over the nine years, and none of the resulting injuries were serious. Another concern of this opposition group is that condom allotment may cause an increase in both consensual sex and sexual violence in prisons. The New South Wales study found this to be false as well. In fact, there was actually a decrease in consensual sex and sexual assaults in the study’s complex after the introduction of condoms.
