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DoJ: HIV transmission a *civil right*?

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  August 9th, 2010 at 01:30 PM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

(Via Instapundit) This is a joke, right? Surely not even this administration is going to let people die of AIDS – even if they’re convicts – by going after humane correctional policies designed to keep uninfected convicts from being infected while still providing the infected treatment and counseling. Even if it does mean removing terminally ill, infectious convicts from the general prison population. That’s just not right.

Some states long ago implemented policies to protect the uninfected part of the prison population while providing exceptional medical treatment and counseling to the infected population.

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.

But apparently that’s going to be policy. At least, if the White House has its way.

What makes this particularly appalling is that the state of South Carolina is apparently not actually required to provide universal AIDS testing, specialized drug programs, and/or counseling to HIV-positive convicts. In fact, if the state wanted to it could save itself two million dollars a year and let AIDS patients (half of whom reportedly weren’t even aware of their status before incarceration) mingle with the general population. That the result would unquestionably result in higher AIDS infection rates in the South Carolinian prison population is apparently not a sufficient deterrent for the White House. Either that, or they just don’t care: many Democrats have a bad habit of being callous towards prison conditions as a cheap way of burnishing their tough guy credentials… which is unfortunately a largely successful strategy, as anybody concerned about prison rape will readily tell you.

Still, I’d love to know why the White House thinks that one convict’s ‘right’ to have access to slightly more prison jobs should trump another convict’s right to not die slowly over a decade as his immune system collapses. And note where I used the scare quotes.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://www.redstate.com/etcartman Kenny Solomon

    That’s easy.

    ‘Nudge’.

    Yes, it’s that simple.

    Cass Sunstein.

    Find ways in each and every single aspect of American law and life to take it all down, lower than the lowest common denominator.

    It’s his job….. What he was brought in to do throughout the administration with every agency.

  • eastbaylarry

    So there will be more room for the expected surge of incarcerations when the full range of ‘political crimes’ are defined in 2013.

  • teresakoch

    Back in the day – before vaccines – there was such a thing as “quarantine”. Maybe someone in the Obama administration should look it up. It’s done to protect the overall health of a community, geniuses.

    If a child has a fever, they aren’t allowed to go back to school and/or daycare until they have been fever-free for 24 hours. As most of us with working brains know, this is done to keep from infecting other children, who could then carry that infection back to their families. All this, for a simple case of the common cold.

    Given the rate at which criminals are released from prisons these days, I would be willing to bet that just the THREAT of lawsuits from the general non-criminal public if so much as ONE person becomes infected with HIV/AIDS from a previously disease-free prisoner would make at least one lawyer in this administration more than just a little uneasy.

    Of course, this group of mental midgets – whose combined IQ is lower than that of my 9-year-old daughter with Down syndrome – hasn’t thought that far ahead. Typical…..

  • Achance

    I doubt a bunch of snobby DC lawyers have ever given much thought to how COs and, especially, their union would react to having unidentified HIV-positive inmates in the general population. COs are constantly assaulted with spit and other body fluids and materials and they REALLY want to know if the person doing the assaulting is HIV positive. If you have to restrain an inmate that is HIV positive, totally different gear and tactics are necessary to safeguard the CO.

    I doubt there’s much CO unionization in SC, but the unionized states will be another matter altogether.

  • stephaniet

    It’s a *right* to infect people with something that will kill them? Where’s the logic in *that*? Oh, that’s right! THERE ISN’T ANY. So… according to this “logic” (or lack thereof), if it’s a prisoner’s “right” to infect perfectly healthy people with HIV/AIDS, it should be my right to go cough on the entire produce section at Wal-Mart the next time I’ve got highly infectious, highly painful strep throat. Did I get that correct?

    If that idea sounded stupid, that’s because it *is* stupid.

    But since eastbaylarry was able to post before I was, suddenly his theory sounds… scarily plausible. But who’s going to be incarcerated then?

  • http://www.redstate.com/etcartman Kenny Solomon

    ……especially those ‘crimes’ that are ‘committed’ by people like us – speaking freely, assembling, attempting redress to the government – will not be punishable by prison. We’ll simply get disappeared and dumped by air to a glacier up near Art’s neck of the woods.

  • Tbone

    Is that what they want?

  • Joshua Persons

    Available here at Human Rights Watch, found via this JURIST post. Apparently HRW and the ACLU are pushing DOJ on this. They’ve already successfully forced Mississippi to end its HIV segregation program. Only South Carolina and Alabama still have such programs.

    Here’s the money quote to me, from the demanded modifications to policy:
    “To eliminate discrimination on the basis of HIV, amend, implement, and maintain policies to eliminate the per se segregation of inmates with HIV to specific institutions and specific dorms and to house inmates with HIV based on classification and other criteria that do not discriminate on the basis of HIV or any other disability.”

    Anyone have any insight as to how other states deal with this?

  • RedBeard

    I was going to say that he is unqualified to hold any job at any level at DoJ, but that’s not quite true. There’s always the job of men’s room attendant.

    But even that could be problematic, since a proper men’s room attendant needs to know the difference between dirty and clean, up and down, what to do with full trash cans, and that only one person at a time should be in the stalls. Could be tough for our man Holder to figure out.

    In all seriousness, what sort of demented minds would propose ending AIDS segregation in prisons? Is this really the sort of insanity into which liberalism has morphed? It’s quite staggering, really.

    Holder must go.

  • Achance

    Even if the facility knows an inmate is HIV positive, they can’t tell anyone under the more actist interpretations of the ADA, HIPPA, and other relevant statutes regarding medical privacy. There’ve been huge battles over this between public employers and CO unions. As I said above, the COs have a very powerful, personal interest in knowing which inmates are HIV positive. Most unionized employers have negotiated all sorts of contract provisions about protecting them from exposure to blood and body-fluid borne pathoges, monitoring their health after any exposure to body fluids, etc. Most public employers are liable on this because it does “get out” which inmates, facility residents, and even employees are HIV positive, even though it isn’t supposed to. Just another bit of civil rights craziness.

    It is a real hassle between the COs’ right to protect themselves and their friends and families and the desires of gay and disabilities rights activists, and it is pretty apparent whose side the USDOJ is on right now.

  • stephaniet

    So, let him clean up the crap rather than spout it?

  • cboullear

    Planned Parenthood’s counseling that you have no obligation to tell a partner you are HIV positive. WTF is going on here?

  • gremlin1974

    ..how far away is it from it being and infected persons “right” to not inform persons that they may put at risk who is not an inmate convicted by a court? I am a Nurse and I find this very disturbing not only because of the danger it puts the other inmates in, but also because of where it may lead; i.e. Not having to tell your doctor or medical professional about your condition.

  • Achance

    fits the agenda of these leftwing organizations like PP, ACLU, HRW, etc. They are nothing more than socialist/communist fronts hiding behind a “progressive” name and image. They know that so long as the Country stays reasonably orderly and prosperous, they can never take over. Consequently, they have our economy and our social order under a full scale attack. Unfortunately, Republican leadership in most of the Country still thinks that all this is just about another election. It is much like the Whigs who had happily and peacefully been swapping the federal goverment back and forth with the Democrats and neither really saw it coming when a radical new party burst on the scene in ’56 and brought about fundamental transformation of American society between ’61 and ’65.

  • Achance
  • http://theminorityreportblog.com Repair_Man_Jack

    He at least admitted to just wanting to see the world burn.

  • bobojake
  • america1st

    after the trials for treason, the members of this regime not executed can be housed with the HIV-positive prisoners and lead the Kumbaya chorus sessions.

  • tapout

    This is what happens when political activism and medicine and common sense collide. We definitely need political activism to decide medical policy. This should send shivers down our spines. This is why we must fight government healthcare.

    As an example in the Emergency Department, the federal government via Medicare has decided that doing bloodcultures is necessary for all admitted patients with pneumonia, even though no studies show that these expenxsive tests–(about $200/test) actually improve outcome–except in severely ill patients who used to get the tests at their Doctor’s discretion. Now, one size fits all, and all patients admitted with pneumonia must have them-regardless of wwhether they actually clinically need them. But if they are not done, then it is considered substandard care and compensation will be held. So now there are millions of dollars being wasted on tests that make no clinical difference.

    Welcome to Obamacare (Govt. run Healthcare), where one size fits all, and that size is not determined by the Doctor or patient, but rather by some nameless, faceless bureaucrat who is completely unaccountable.

  • Deskpilot

    Then EVERY inmate must be treated as HIV positive. Every CO will be trained in the PRESUMPTION of infection and all inmates will be treated the same.
    Hermetically seal each inmate in a plastic bag, nothing sharper than a tissue to eat with and no contact.
    It could also be used a a jobs program :
    Build new prisons so every inmate is kept in a solitary cell so as to prevent infection. Engineers, concrete, steel and electrical union workers under a PLA
    Hire more COs for the larger footprint of the institution.
    More health care providers.

    Did I mention the local taxpayers will have to foot those bills?

  • RedBeard
  • jisaacconnett

    In the state where I live, if a prostitute has sex with a John and does not tell him if she is HIV +, she can be, and often is, charged with attempted murder because she failed to disclose her condition.

    In the correctional facility in which I worked, when inmates are admitted, they are given a physical exam by a health care professional and if the inmate is HIV+, he/she is started on a regimen of medications, and might even bring medications with them from wherever they happened to arrive. HIV blood testing is not done routinely unless the inmate is known to have AIDS. Inmates may request blood testing if they think they might have been exposed to HIV, but few actually do so.

    The physicians and nurses providing care for inmates are prevented by HIPPA laws from disclosing information about the inmates to anyone not involved in the direct medical care of the inmate. However, information about individual inmates has a way of becoming known via the inmate grape-vine, so in some cases other inmates soon learn who is HIV+. This situation has been around long enough now that it is not as big a deal in the correctional facilities as many here seem to think. Correctional Officers and health-care workers have been exposed to this situation long enough now that everyone knows to use what is known as universal precautions. People who work around the inmates wear gloves, safety glasses, etc to prevent contamination and it is assumed that anyone being treated in the medical facility is positive for some communicable disease.

    If an HIV+ inmate were to rape another inmate, the person who did so would have to constantly worry about retribution from HIV free inmates who tend to have their own in-house disciplinary methods. Rape by HIV+ inmates does happen, but relatively infrequently. In some cases, HIV+ inmates are placed in protective custody to prevent physical harm being done to them, but that also is not common.

    It is common for HIV+ inmates to be housed in the medical facility if the inmate is far along in the disease process. Some people have aids for some years without any physical deterioration, but others seem to weaken rather quickly, I have seen several people who have been HIV+ for 15-20 years and still appear to be relatively healthy. While I appreciate the efforts of the South Carolina prison system to segregate HIV+ inmates, it probably is a rather expensive effort that has little bang for the buck.

    If people here think this is a scandal, if you knew how much tax payer money is used to provide medical care for inmates in correctional facilities, you would really be outraged. Many inmates receive coronary artery bypass and arterial graft surgeries that many civilians cannot afford. The expenditures are enormous, but the Federal Courts have mandated that we must do it. We put inmates in prison for life, then spend huge amounts of money keeping them alive even longer.

  • johnt

    Today the prisons, tomorrow the hospitals, then maybe the schools, except of course the Sidwell School im Washington.
    The revolutionaries in France couldn’t do better, hate more, nor be as doctrinaire.

  • johnt

    n/t

  • http://pocketchangeproductions.net/ anotherindyfilmguy

    I mean if convicted felons are allowed to vote etc why should they vote democrat anymore when the dems clearly put PC feelings above their lives.

  • Tbone

    You hand out shirts to everybody that say:

    “HIV Positive” on the back. Lower back.

  • candi

    Can any one tell me why this is happening. I read and read, only thing I can come up with is we lost the war on terro.r. We just weren’t told nicely.

  • gremlin1974

    and not even here in Arkansas are you “required” to tell your healthcare professionals that you are infected. However, we as healthcare professionals tell people that for good treatment you must tell us everything that is wrong with you. My concern is that this kind of stuff supports not giving your doctor or nurse all the info that we need to treat you. Which is not only dangerous but stupid. Hummm, Dangerous and Stupid, yep must be a liberal thing.

  • awunsch

    things are “human rights”? Every day, we hear a new nonsensical human right being debated. Who gives this HIV right to humans? Forgetting the obvious lack of common sense in this move by the Obama admin, this makes no sense at all. Human rights come from the Natural Law upon which our laws are also based and from our Creator. These trumped up rights that the State is giving these days will only serve to hurt people and further move our society down the slippery slope of immorality and decline.

  • awunsch

    things are “human rights”? Every day, we hear a new nonsensical human right being debated. Who gives this HIV right to humans? Forgetting the obvious lack of common sense in this move by the Obama admin, this makes no sense at all. Human rights come from the Natural Law upon which our laws are also based and from our Creator. These trumped up rights that the State is giving these days will only serve to hurt people and further move our society down the slippery slope of immorality and decline.

  • tara2009

    of homosexuals ,bisexual and the unsupecting wife of one of these perverts,
    IF WHEN THIS DISEASE WAS FIRST IDENTIFIED THE ONES WHO HAD
    IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN QUARANTINE JUST AS ANY OTHER LIFE THREATNING DISEASE,BUT THE DO GOODERS CRIED FOWL AND SAID IT WAS DISCRIMINATION,SO YOU CAN THANK THEM THIS DISEASE THAT
    HAS KILLED MILLIONS, INCLUDING INNOCENT BABIES. THIS DISEASE
    WILL ONLY END WHEN YOU ELIMINATE THE SOURCE.MEHPENSACOLA,FL

  • cactusjack

    Texas – no it’s not the guns or politifcal conservatism or the textbooks, though those are all part of it – the deep dark secret reason? – Capital Punishment. It’s also why Europe hated George Bush before he even left the Governor’s mansion. I have been racking my brains trying to figure out why they hate capital punishment so much. It isn’t because of “compassion” though they willingly use those clueless amnesty groups for their front. All I can come up with is, they are jealous of the power of capital punishment and wish it transferred from the judicial and executive branches (where it is tightly controlled), to become a political function. Anyone else including you Kenny who has probably thought a lot about this, got any ideas?

  • janis

    My prayer is that we can be that once more. Gonna have to do a lot of pruning, weeding, and wholesale digging out of entrenched idiots to get there.

    And we don’t have much time to get the job done, either.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    remedies that once would have seemed radical, won’t seem so to the tea partiers and most Americans in this context of the re-education of Americans in how bad are liberal policies.

  • janis

    our side, don’t you, GC? I’m pretty sure that the radical policies of the current lot in the Dem leadership are becoming universally loathed by all but the most die-hard socialists.

    Our biggest enemies at this point are the unions and the politicians on “our” side who still think that, as Art put it, this is just another election. There are still way too many people who just can’t believe that what is happening in America is really happening.

  • acat

    yeah, it doesn’t quite work…

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • janis

    point of my comment. I want them to stand up and get loud and start doing their jobs like they believe in America, freedom, prosperity, and a tide that will lift all boats instead of a tsunami of debt that will drown us all. I want them to stop being polite all the time and get mad enough to actually represent “We, the People.”

    What’s so sad is that that is what would be radical today– actually doing their jobs.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    elected Republicans. Janis, I hope you heard Rush yesterday on a politico story about so called kook-radical repubs in which Rush quoted Obama and Rev Wright. Yes, I have wanted Repubs in DC to stop fearing being called racists since the McCain campaign.

    I’m just thinking that we are past the point where average Americans ala tea partiers would consider such actions and real conservative policies to be radical given the radical nature of Obama’s person and policies and the depth of this recession.

    But I totally agree with what you desire. all the way