{"id":6411,"date":"2017-09-08T11:55:59","date_gmt":"2017-09-08T15:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/?p=6411"},"modified":"2020-07-21T10:09:54","modified_gmt":"2020-07-21T14:09:54","slug":"hiv_men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prisonpolicy.org\/blog\/2017\/09\/08\/hiv_men\/","title":{"rendered":"The parallel epidemics of incarceration & HIV in the Deep South"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a New York Times Magazine<\/i> article<\/a> published in June 2017, journalist Linda Villarosa highlighted the “hidden HIV epidemic” among Black gay and bisexual men in the Deep South. The overall decline of HIV rates<\/a> in the US may give some people a premature sense of victory; this progress obscures the fact that HIV remains a significant problem for a disproportionate number of Black gay and bisexual men in this country, as Villarosa points out: <\/p>\n

“Swaziland, a tiny African nation, has the world’s highest rate of H.I.V., at 28.8 percent of the population. If gay and bisexual African-American men made up a country, its rate would surpass that of this impoverished African nation \u2014 and all other nations.” <\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Villarosa mentions the systemic issues impacting HIV rates among southern Black communities, including the “crippled medical infrastructure,” the limited domestic funding and resources dedicated to HIV\/AIDS, and the movement of the HIV epidemic from cities like New York and San Francisco to smaller cities with larger Black populations in the Deep South. Along these lines, Dr. Mark Dybul — an infectious diseases researcher and professor — describes HIV, malaria, and tuberculosis as “discriminatory<\/a>” diseases because they disproportionately impact communities that are already marginalized by poverty, inadequate resources, and discrimination. Villarosa also briefly touches on the history of incarceration of a few of the men she interviewed, but the intersection of HIV, race, and incarceration deserves further investigation, especially considering the high rates of incarceration<\/a> in the South.<\/p>\n

There is little information available about LGBT people of color behind bars, and even less data on the rates of HIV and incarceration among men who have sex with men. In the public health literature that does exist on HIV, the category of men who have sex with men, or MSM, is applied broadly and inconsistently to self-identified gay and bisexual men, men with a lifetime history of male-to-male sexual contact, and\/or men who self-report male-to-male sexual contact in the past 6 months, depending on the particular study. The lack of consistency and clarity when we talk about this population only makes it harder to address these issues. <\/span>As Villarosa puts it, “too many black gay and bisexual men [are] falling through a series of safety nets.”<\/p>\n

The existing studies begin to fill in the gaps in literature, but there is more work to be done to understand how the interactions of high rates of HIV and our criminal justice system disproportionately impact Black gay and bisexual men and Black MSM. Recent research suggests an overlap between HIV and incarceration: <\/p>\n