Should all new convicts get HIV tests?
08/23/2006
Should all new convicts get HIV tests? Houston senator asks AG to rule By Mike Ward AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Wednesday, August 23, 2006 For years, prison officials have asked all convicts coming into the state prison system to be tested for HIV. About 80 percent have consented. Now, a state senator wants to know whether they can make such tests mandatory. "It's a public safety issue," said Sen. Rodney Ellis, D-Houston. "We're very concerned about the rapidly increasing infection rates." Current prison system policy states that all incoming inmates "should be tested at intake," and under a proposed change to take effect next week, that would become "shall be tested"
Upon release, every inmate is tested for HIV as part of a mandatory DNA blood test.
Were prison officials able to test all incoming convicts, advocates of the testing say, they could know with certainty who was HIV-positive ‹ information that would assist them in properly treating early infections. It could also provide statistical data on how many convicts are becoming infected or testing positive for the infection after they come into the prison system.
Inmates who test HIV-positive are not isolated from other inmates.
For some time, some medical experts have called for such mandatory testing in prisons, citing prisons as perfect incubators for a number of deadly diseases, including HIV and AIDS, and arguing that the nation's 1.4 million prison inmates have an infection rate five times that of the general public.
Diseases in prison return to society when the infected inmates are released, the experts say.
By state law, the results of HIV tests are confidential except to the individual inmate and medical staff.
To underscore his concern on the issue, Ellis on Aug. 2 asked Attorney General Greg Abbott to rule on whether the testing can be mandatory under current state law ‹ a law that was changed about a year ago to require the mandatory HIV testing for all convicts departing prison. Ellis and Rep.
Yvonne Davis, D-Dallas, were the authors of that change.
"If (Abbott) says the mandatory tests at intake are not mandatory, I'm going to put in legislation to require them," Ellis said.
According to prison system statistics, more than 38,700 Texas convicts were tested for HIV last year. Of those, 372 were diagnosed as HIV-positive, according to the statistics.
Texas' prison system holds about 154,000 convicts. Of those, 2,627 were HIV-positive in July, official statistics show.
"We encourage incoming inmates to submit to the test so we can get them the treatment they need," said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
mward@statesman.com; 445-1712
