After a few years break, Prison Health News is back and better than ever — with four extra pages of health care and advocacy information in each issue, and a network of over 2,000  subscribers and contributors in prisons and jails across the country.

In 2001, Prison Health News was launched to meet a critical need for information written by and for people who have been in prison or are currently behind the walls.   Our readers are living inside a system that denies them prevention tools and treatment information about HIV, hepatitis, and other health issues.  They are dealing with medical neglect, daily humiliations driven by intense stigma, and the destruction of their communities by mass imprisonment.  Prison Health News works to build community across the prison walls that divide us.

Now a joint project of the Institute for Community Justice and Reaching Out: A Support Group with Action, each Prison Health News issue is produced by a Philadelphia-based collective of writers and editors, most of whom have been in prison and are living with HIV.  Through our collaboration with the Philadelphia FIGHT AIDS Library, we are able to answer the many letters to us from people in prisons and jails asking for resources and health information. We also work in partnership with organizations across the country who assist with distribution, support and advocacy for people incarcerated in their cities and states.  Contact one of our Resource Partners to get involved in your local area!

Our relaunch issue features:

1. Getting Out Alive: Advocating for Your Meds – on the strategies one PHN writing collective member used to fight for her access to meds while incarcerated
2. From the Crack House to the White House – on the inspirational journey of one PHN writing collective member from her incarceration to her involvement in national and international advocacy work
3. Hearts on a Wire – on the work of a Philadelphia-based collective fighting alongside trans folks in the prison system and those coming home for justice, dignity and respect
4. “To Help Our People Through This” – on the political forces underlying one PHN partner’s work to heal relationships divided by prison walls
5. Staying Safe and Healthy in Prison – on the basics of HIV prevention in correctional settings, based on a Roll Call presentation conducted every June in the Philadelphia Prison System

You can view Issue 8 online.  You can also download a printable version of Issue 8, formatted for double-sided photocopying.

By Kia Gregory
Philadelphia Inquirer

In the prison gymnasium, the faint smell of bleach wafts through the air. The graduates, in the crisp new blues they requested, hug and mingle before their ceremony.

They have much in common: 13 young black men, caught up in drugs, in and out of jail, and now part of a statistic that offers little hope beyond these jailhouse walls.

Pastor Ernest McNear, standing off to the side, wearing a dark suit and clerical collar, is working to change that.

The inmates – ages 24 to 35 – are the first to graduate from his latest effort, a program that works with inmates and then mentors them for a year after release to help keep them focused.

“If you are going to have successful reentry,” McNear says in his raspy voice, “you have to have someone welcoming you into the community, not just a program.”

Read more…

Housing Subsidy Has High-Profile Foe
By Cara Buckley
Published: April 29, 2010

The mayor’s office is urging Gov. David A. Paterson to veto a bill that would offer greater rent relief to 11,000 New York City residents with H.I.V. or AIDS, saying the measure would tax the city’s strained budget.

The bill, which was passed by the State Senate on Tuesday and the Assembly in January, would mean that low-income people receiving housing assistance from the city’s H.I.V./AIDS Services Administration would be required to spend no more than 30 percent of their income on rent. Despite the city’s current subsidy, many beneficiaries of the program still spend more than half of their income on rent.  The office of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, which sent a memo to senators in January opposing the bill, said that the city would spend $150 million on the program this fiscal year, and that the new measure would cost it an additional 10 percent.

Yet paying more toward low-income tenants’ rent would result in fewer evictions and fewer placements in emergency housing, both of which are expensive, according to Senator Tom Duane, the Democrat from Manhattan who sponsored the bill.  The state sets the policy for the H.I.V./AIDS housing assistance program, the city administers it, and they share funds for it. Under current regulations, people who are enrolled in the program and who receive income from Social Security, federal disability payments or wages must pay all but $344 of their income in rent.

Sean Barry, director of the NYC AIDS Housing Network, a community organizing group that represents many of the program’s clients, said beneficiaries often pay upward of 60 percent of their income in rent. Among them is Wanda Hernandez, of the Bronx, who is on the board of Mr. Barry’s organization.  Ms. Hernandez, 48, learned she was H.I.V.-positive 15 years ago, and was later hobbled by chronic pain and carpal tunnel syndrome. She spends about $750, the bulk of her federal disability income, on her $1,085-a-month, one-bedroom apartment. Under the bill, the program would cover about $750 of her rent.  Living on the roughly $350 a month left over required scrimping on subway and bus travel, visiting food pantries and cutting out toiletries, she said. Sometimes, sympathetic neighbors leave bags of used clothing at her door. “I’ve been getting by on pennies,” she said.

Read More…

Human Rights Watch
April 14, 2010

Download the Full Report

Executive Summary:  In Alabama, people in the visiting room recognize the armband worn by John S. and ask him if he has HIV. In South Carolina, Ronald B. was sentenced to 90 days in jail, but because he is HIV-positive he went to the maximum security prison that houses death row prisoners.  In Mississippi, guards tell prisoners in the segregated HIV unit to “get your sick asses out of the way” when they pass them in the hall.  Many prisoners with HIV will spend more time in prison because they are not eligible for programs that promote early release.

These are some of the harsh consequences of HIV policies in Alabama, South Carolina and Mississippi, the only three states in the nation that have continued to segregate prisoners living with HIV.  In March 2010, after reviewing the findings in this report, the Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections decided to terminate the segregation policy.   The segregation and discrimination against HIV-positive prisoners continues to this day in Alabama and South Carolina, and constitutes cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of international law.

Upon entering the state prison system in Alabama, South Carolina or Mississippi, each prisoner must submit to a test for HIV.  In Alabama and South Carolina, and until recently, in Mississippi, the result of this test will determine almost every aspect of a prisoner’s life for as long as he or she is in prison.

More than the severity of the crime, the length of their sentence or almost any other factor, the HIV test will determine where he or she will be housed, eat, and recreate; whether there will be access to in-prison jobs and the opportunity to earn wages; and in South Carolina, how much “good time” can be earned toward an early release. The opportunity for supervised work in the community, often a key to successful transition after release, will be either restricted or denied altogether.  During the entire period of incarceration, most prisoners who test positive will wear an armband, badge or other marker signifying the positive results of their HIV test.

Read more…

Original Post on Courageous, ACT UP Philly’s Blog

A new book by legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated, the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated.  It’s simply been redesigned, and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system.

Click here to watch the interview with Michelle Alexander!

by Rachel Rabkin Pechman
January/February 2010
POZ

In October 2009, after 12 years behind bars, Beverly “Chopper” Henry was released from the Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF)—with $200 and some bus tokens. Living with HIV (and hepatitis C) in prison had been difficult, and getting out offered joy and relief. But Henry’s newfound freedom also presented a range of challenges.

In prison, Henry, now 60, had been among those prisoners who pushed for better care and treatment for their HIV and helped improve prison health care. Because of them, many of the 21,980 HIV-positive prisoners in U.S. jails and prisons now have access to HIV meds and can control their virus while locked up. Unfortunately, research shows that the health of many positive prisoners takes a nosedive once they’re released. A study published online in PLoS ONE in September found that only 15 percent of positive prisoners released from the San Francisco County jail system continuously took antiretroviral meds after release. In other words, the majority of former prisoners stopped taking their meds or took them only intermittently—which raised their viral loads and derailed their HIV treatment.

Why, when given a new (re)lease on life, would prisoners neglect their health? It’s simple: Most released prisoners have no medical benefits and scant prison discharge planning help. That deprives them of the services and support they need to secure housing, find a job, get health care benefits and enter drug treatment (if needed)—making it nearly impossible to stay on top of HIV care.

READ MORE…

By Jordan Flaherty
January 13, 2010
COLORLINES

With police charging sex workers as sex offenders—the majority of them Black women—activists hope the city’s mayoral elections next month will pave the way for fighting the law.

Tabitha has been working as a prostitute in New Orleans since she was 13. Now 30 years old, she can often be found working on a corner just outside of the French Quarter. A small and slight white woman, she has battled both drug addiction and illness and struggles every day to find a meal or a place to stay for the night. These days, Tabitha, who asked that her real name not be used in this story, has yet another burden: a stamp printed on her driver’s license labels her a sex offender. Her crime? Sex work.

READ MORE..

What do people in prison have to say about the Canadian government’s unwillingness to permit the distribution of clean needles in prison? How has this policy, that denies the realities of injection drug use in prison, affected individuals who are struggling with drug addiction? And what does this mean for the community as a whole? The Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network sought to answer these and many other questions by interviewing people from across the country to learn more about their experiences with injection drug use in federal prisons.

Between 2008 and 2009, interviews were conducted in person and over the phone in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia, resulting in sworn affidavits or testimonials from 50 individuals who either were currently incarcerated or had previously served time in a federal prison. The hope is that their stories will strengthen the case for change, which governments continue to ignore even as a growing body of evidence highlights the need.