HIV Positive Prisoners Receive More Equal Treatment in Alabama After ACLU’s Efforts
Access to Work Release Program Still Needed, Says ACLU
November 1, 2007
MONTGOMERY, AL — After years of advocacy by the American Civil Liberties Union, AIDS Alabama and state legislators, the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) has agreed to give HIV positive prisoners greater access to visitation, educational programs, substance abuse treatment programs, and religious services. Until now, HIV-positive prisoners have been denied these programs and services offered to the general population of inmates.
The changes were announced in a recent letter from ADOC Commissioner Richard F. Allen to the ACLU of Alabama stating that he implemented a review of prison policies and procedures as a result of a September 28 letter from the ACLU of Alabama. The ACLU letter urged Commissioner Allen to put an immediate end to grossly discriminatory segregation policies and practices being enforced by the ADOC.
“Alabama’s HIV segregation policy has for many years been a shameful remnant of an earlier time, the moral equivalent of Jim Crow laws, and Commissioner Allen’s wise decision to end this degrading policy will bring about far-reaching benefits for all Alabamans,” said Margaret Winter, Associate Director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “Many more improvements need to be made, but this is an important first step.”
Alabama is the only in the union to segregate HIV-positive prisoners and exclude them from prison programs. Mississippi, the next to last state, ended segregation of HIV-positive prisoners in 2000, also under ACLU pressure. At Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women in Wetumpka, Alabama, female HIV-positive prisoners have been housed in total segregation from the general population with only the most limited access to chapel, family visits, library, and all the other programs and activities available to the general population, and have been kept strictly isolated behind barbed-wire fences.
At Limestone Correctional Facility, the men’s prison in Harvest, Alabama, HIV-positive men have also been housed in total segregation from the general population and have had limited access to exercise, religious services, substance abuse programs, work opportunities, and community corrections programs.
“For decades, HIV-positive prisoners in Alabama have served longer and
harsher sentences solely due to their HIV status; they have been denied the
opportunity to improve themselves; they have been locked down and away from
everyone else in the prison for 23 or 24 hours a day, 365 days a year; and
they have been denied basic human rights. These policies cannot be justified
by public health or corrections concerns,” said Olivia Turner, Executive
Director of the ACLU of Alabama. “It is high time that these prisons
within prisons run by the Department of Corrections come to an end, and Commissioner
Allen should be applauded for beginning this process.”
The ACLU and local and national advocates for people with HIV have challenged
prison segregation policies for HIV-positive inmates since 1987 in two trials,
two trips to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals and the Alabama Supreme
Court, and in a public education campaign. That campaign culminated in
2003 in a major report by the Alabama Governor’s HIV Commission for Children,
Youth and Adults, finding that “the evidence is overwhelming that the
exclusion of prisoners from educational, vocational, rehabilitative or community-based
corrections programs, simply on the basis of HIV status, has no public health
or correctional justification.”
Although the ADOC has agreed to integrate HIV-positive inmates into several
necessary programs, it continues to deny them access to work release services.
The ACLU plans to meet with Commissioner Allen next week to urge an end to
this policy and other discriminatory policies.
“There is not a single reason for the state to continue to bar prisoners with HIV from work release programs,” said Christine Sun, a staff attorney with the ACLU’s HIV Project. “Everyone benefits when former prisoners are able to find employment and become productive members of society. In light of the ADOC’s willingness to make so many other changes, we are hopeful that the commissioner will hear us out on this issue at our upcoming meeting.”
The ACLU’s September 28 letter to Commissioner Allen is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/32495res20070928.html
Commissioner Allen’s response to the ACLU is available online at: http://www.aclu.org/prison/restrict/32493res20070928.htm
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