The criminalisation of transmitting HIV, or exposing someone to the risk of acquiring HIV, or non-disclosure of HIV status, continues to be a significant issue. Nic Holas explains.
From Australia to Canada, the US to Nigeria, people living with HIV have been accused, arrested, charged, and convicted of both HIV-specific and HIV-related crimes. It’s a hot button issue that draws on over 30 years of HIV fear and stigma to inform the public’s reaction.
At a surface level, some people may think it’s entirely reasonable that laws exist to prevent people from spreading HIV. Given that HIV still conjures up those 80s and 90s images of dying gay men, why wouldn’t we have laws to stop that awful thing happening to anyone one else? Well, firstly because in Australia, those days are over, but the reality is HIV criminalisation has never successfully prevented new infections – just driven those living with HIV further underground.
When HIV is treated as a criminal issue it results in the ongoing discrimination of all HIV+ people, and hinders the fight against HIV by reinforcing stigma, which discourages disclosure, testing and treatment. If you don’t know you’ve got it, you cant be charged with transmitting it. Criminal accusations, even without a resulting charge or trial, have previously ruined the lives of HIV+ people, and in overseas’ country’s even sent innocent ones to prison.
To better understand why HIV criminalisation must end, we need to peer past the red ribbon and peer into the grey area of this complicated issue.
HIV is a public health issue, not a criminal issue
It stands to reason that of the 35 million people around the world living with HIV, some will be capable of committing crimes. HIV is a rather broad church, what with it being a chronic manageable illness acquired via a complex variety of human interactions. In the event that a criminally minded person set out to knowingly and maliciously infect other people with HIV, we already have general laws to deal with them, the same way that we would deal with any other individual whose intention is to do harm to another person.