Two states in the union, South Carolina and Alabama, segregate their HIV-positive inmates, a policy that is essentially a compound punishment on top of whatever sentence they've already received. They're forced to wear markers identifying their status, they're denied access to many of the same privileges and programs that inmates who aren't HIV positive have, including those that can contribute eligibility for early release. Being HIV positive means that they're forced to live under maximum-security conditions regardless of the severity of their crimes. A thief and a murderer are treated the same if the thief is HIV positive, where otherwise the thief might have been eligible for imprisonment in say, a medium-security facility. In addition to the individual rights violated by involuntary testing, an individual's status is also involuntarily disclosed to their friends and family members upon their placement in a segregated facility. These practices were all detailed in a joint ACLU-Human Rights Watch report from earlier this year.
J. Christian Adams, the conservative activist driving conservative interest in the New Black Panther case, is now attacking the Civil Rights Division because it is expected to sue South Carolina for corrections practices the other 48 states have already decided are inhumane, calling this "extremist":
In South Carolina, it has worked so well since 1998 that there has only been a single transmission of HIV/AIDS to a noninfected prisoner. All that may change, however, thanks to a threat from Eric Holder's Justice Department.
South Carolina received a letter from the now-infamous Civil Rights Division that the policy of keeping infected inmates at a designated facility, instead of scattered across the state in the general prison population, may unfairly stigmatize infected prisoners. To the Obama political appointees in the Civil Rights Division, this constitutes discrimination under the Americans With Disabilities Act.
Adams combines his advocacy of the Mike Huckabee involuntary quarantine approach to HIV prevention with the an apparent belief that criminal conviction means one forfeits all individual rights. The balance between the state's interest in preventing the spread of HIV and AIDS in prison has to be weighed in context: in a democracy the ends don't simply justify the means. Adams' favored approach also is not the one preferred by medical experts and most prison systems. According to the World Health Organization, "Mandatory HIV testing is unethical and there is evidence suggesting that mandatory HIV testing and segregation of HIV-positive prisoners is costly, inefficient, and can have negative health consequences for segregated prisoners." According to the ACLU/HRW report, in 1985, when we knew very little about HIV and AIDS, 46 of 51 state and federal prison systems segregated HIV-positive inmates. Now there are only two.
The original purpose of the Civil Rights Division was to ensure that the rights of disfavored groups -- like say, HIV-positive prison inmates -- are protected. Far from being "extremist," this is the precise role the Civil Rights Division was created to play. If conservatives find that objectionable, that's fine, but they should just be honest and say they're ideologically opposed to the existence of the Civil Rights Division and the role it plays.
In fact given that only two states segregate their HIV positive inmates, South Carolina's approach would be more appropriately characterized as "extreme." Certainly this implies that by definition that such treatment is "unusual," and in practice it's quite obviously cruel.
