The XVI International AIDS Conference, “AIDS 2006”, took place from 13 to 18 August and attracted 26,000 researchers, physicians, front‐line workers, advocates and others involved…
Abstract
The XVI International AIDS Conference, “AIDS 2006”, took place from 13 to 18 August and attracted 26,000 researchers, physicians, front‐line workers, advocates and others involved in the fight against HIV/AIDS from more than 170 countries. More than ever before, issues related to HIV/AIDS in prisons were presented and discussed. On the first day of the conference, a satellite meeting organized by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the Public Health Agency of Canada and the Correctional Service of Canada debated issues related to HIV/AIDS in prisons in great depth. At the Conference itself, two oral sessions and a large number of poster presentations were dedicated to HIV/AIDS in prisons. In addition, the United Nations released an important guidance document on issues related to HIV/AIDS in prisons (see elsewhere in this issue). Most activities focused on HIV prevention, although delegates also heard about efforts to make HIV treatment, including ARVs, available to prisoners in developing countries
This study aims to ask how HIV/AIDS is arranged as a public threat in and through Canadian law, particularly in relation to transmission, and how strategies of capture extend the…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to ask how HIV/AIDS is arranged as a public threat in and through Canadian law, particularly in relation to transmission, and how strategies of capture extend the affective force of criminalization leading to poor health outcomes for persons living with HIV/AIDS.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper with a focus on applying affect theorist Jasbir Puar’s work on assemblage and debility. The authors use Puar’s work to frame the conditions that persons with HIV/AIDS experience in the Canadian criminal justice context as debilitating.
Findings
The authors found that while HIV transmission is not itself a criminal act in the Canadian criminal justice context, activities where transmission is prevalent or possible have been criminalized, particularly in relation to nondisclosure of health status, sex work and substance use. Further, the authors found that when the activities associated with HIV transmission are criminalized, strategies of capture extend the affective force of criminalization first in the inadequate provision of health-care and pharma-care services, second in state resistance to implement harm reduction measure and third in punitive population management strategies.
Originality/value
Persons living with HIV/AIDS have historically experienced stigmatization, especially intersecting with neoliberal, white supremacist and heteropatriarchal axes of power. This paper uses assemblage theory to shore up how these relations operate in ways that close off possibilities, by constituting the HIV/AIDS assemblage as a criminal – rather than a health phenomenon. This paper, thus, holds Canada to account for debilitating a historically disadvantaged and multiplying marginalized population.