Important note: Information in this article was accurate in 1989. The state of the art may have changed since the publication date.
Convicts sue to end state prison AIDS policy
San Francisco Chronicle - Tuesday, September 12, 1989
Lori Olszewski, Chronicle Staff Writer
Jimmy Camarillo watches television and stares at the walls of his cell while other inmates in the California state prison system receive college educations and job training. The reason is AIDS. "I feel like they just have me in storage," said Camarillo, 34, a prisoner in the AIDS isolation unit at the California Medical Facility at Vacaville. California is one of only six states that automatically segregate all inmates known to be infected with the human immunodeficiency virus, including those without symptoms like Camarillo, according to a 1988 National Institute of Justice report. Although all people infected with HIV are contagious if they engage in risky behaviors, such as unprotected sex, they can live for years without developing the full-blown medical problems associated with AIDS. "I'm still healthy, but they won't let us work on the mainline. We can't even use the library, the yard or the visitors' room when the other prisoners are there. All we can do is sit and look at the boob tube," said Camarillo, gesturing toward the crowded television room. Camarillo is among 115 inmates in the Vacaville HIV unit who are involved in a class-action lawsuit that challenges the Department of Corrections policy to segregate all prisoners infected with the AIDS virus. "One of the reasons I stole stuff was to support my drug habit," said Camarillo, who is serving a seven-year sentence for burglary and battery of a peace officer. "Now, because I have HIV, I can't even go to prison Narcotics Anonymous meetings, like somehow that would spread the virus. Does that make any sense?" The claim challenging the segregation policy is part of a more encompassing lawsuit filed in January 1988 on behalf of all Vacaville inmates alleging that all prisoners -- not just those infected with the AIDS virus -- are receiving inadequate medical and psychiatric care at the state prison. The trial, which began yesterday in U.S. District Court in Sacramento, is expected to last at least three months and is one of the first cases in the nation to challenge prison AIDS policy. A trial on another prison AIDS case in Alabama, one of the other states that isolate all prisoners infected with HIV, has ended, but a federal judge has not yet rendered his decision. The same segregation practices under attack in the courts are seen as good medicine and public health policy by the Department of Corrections. "These people want to take a prison full of convicted felons and turn it into the Mayo Clinic," said Tipton Kindel, spokesman for the California Department of Corrections. AGAINST THE TREND California's staunch defense of its segregation of HIV-infected inmates, however, is out of step with the national trend on AIDS prison policy. In Connecticut, the state prison system recently agreed to stop blanket segregation in a settlement that avoided a legal battle on the same issue. The federal prison system also stopped blanket segregation in 1986, and the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, a group of prison health-care experts, does not advocate segregation for prisoners infected with HIV who have no symptoms. Theodore Hammett, one of the leading experts on AIDS in prison in the nation and a consultant to the U.S. Justice Department, said, "The California policy is totally misguided and is the exception." He said most prisons isolate only people infected with the HIV virus who rape other inmates or whose health has deteriorated, making isolation medically necessary to prevent exposure to opportunistic infections. For example, New York, with the highest number of AIDS-infected prisoners in the nation, tries to integrate its HIV-infected prisoners, which account for about 17 percent of its inmates. "California is using a shotgun approach when a sharpshooting approach would be more appropriate," Hammett said. Prison spokesman Kindel said California's approach is for the inmates' own good. It benefits inmates, Kindel said, by concentrating the specialized medical care required for those suffering from HIV infection at the prisons where those patients are. "There's no way we could provide medical specialists in proximity to every prison. Plus, segregation also is needed to help stem the spread of infection. You've got intravenous drug users and people tattooing with shared needles. Some homosexual activity, consensual and nonconsensual, goes on," Kindel said. Drug use and sex are illegal in California prisons, but inmates in interviews said shooting up drugs, homosexual rape and consenting homosexual sex continue to flourish behind bars. Those are all risky behaviors that can spread the virus. "We don't have personnel to watch all 84,000 prisoners every minute. That's one reason why segregation makes sense," Kindel said. But the segregation policy has not isolated all the prisoners carrying the AIDS virus from the California prison population. Because California currently does not have legislation allowing mandatory AIDS testing for prisoners, only prisoners who volunteer for the test are identified. EFFECT OF POLICY The fear of placement in the AIDS unit discourages prisoners from volunteering for testing, prisoners said. In turn, that denies some of those who are infected access to medical advances, such as early use of AZT, that have been proved to prolong the life of the HIV-infected. AZT is being administered to many of the infected prisoners. Currently, 309 of the state's 84,000 inmates have been tested and isolated: 115 men in Northern California at Vacaville, 177 prisoners at the California Institute for Men at Chino and 17 prisoners at the California Institute for Women in Frontera. Yet an estimated 3 percent of the prison population, or as many as 2,400 inmates, may be infected with the AIDS virus, according to a Department of Health Services study this year. That means more than 2,000 prisoners may not know they are infected and, as a result, may be unknowingly spreading the virus. "If I'd known I would have to live like this, I wouldn't have volunteered for the test," said Steve Mednick, 32, an inmate in the special unit at Vacaville who discovered that he was infected with HIV four years ago, although he still has no symptoms. "It's like they're saying we're going to die anyway so they don't want to waste their money on us," Mednick said. "That's so shortsighted. Many of us will be paroled, but we won't have had the same advantages of job training or education as prisoners on the mainline. Our chances of succeeding outside will be much less." Paul DiDonato, a San Francisco attorney with the firm that represents the HIV inmates, said, "The way to stop the spread of the virus is through education and counseling for all prisoners, not by creating a leper colony for those who come forward to test." "When the state defends segregation by saying their people have sex and do drugs in prison, they are saying they can't control their institutions," DiDonato said. "To me, that says even with isolation, those activities are going to occur and the virus will spread." Because sex in prison is a reality, some say that distributing condoms, rather than segregation, would be sensible corrections policy. Currently, Vermont is the only state prison system to make condoms freely available, although Mississippi prisoners can purchase condoms in the prison commissary. Two city jails, San Francisco and Philadelphia, are providing inmates in the local jails with condoms, but the California Department of Corrections remains against condom distribution to prisoners. "That would be sending out false signals to prisoners," said Kindel. "On one hand, we're saying sexual activity is prohibited, but then we'd be saying those rules don't really matter. These are people who already have trouble abiding by the rules of society, and I don't think ignoring those rules is a message we want to reinforce." "It would be like winking at them," Kindel said. But Judy Greenspan, AIDS information director with the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project in Washington, D.C., said, "I think it becomes a moral question, rather than a legal one. Yes, sex in prison is against the law, but we are talking about the chance to save someone's life." Kindel said, "We have taken a conservative position and we think it's the right one. If you make a mistake with AIDS, there's no pulling back."
Keywords: LAWSUITS; US; DISEASE; AIDS; PRISONS
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