Florida leads nation in prisoners with HIV, study shows

Share
medical worker
Medical worker. By gorodenkoff via iStock for WMNF News.

Listen: 

Florida now leads the country in percentage of prisoners living with HIV.

A new study from the Prison Policy Initiative shows that Florida’s state and federal correctional institutions hold the most prisoners in the country living with HIV.

Mitch Perry, reporter for the Florida Phoenix and on-air host for WMNF, reported on the disease’s prevalence in Florida.

“Florida was the tops in the country with nearly three percent of its population, prison population, having HIV in prison, and specifically that is 1,800 HIV positive people in prison in 2021”

Why? Wanda Bertram, spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative, cites many possibilities.

35 states, including Florida, have laws that criminalize the transmission of HIV. Bertram says that this, among other factors, leads to high rates of the disease in prison.

“The same people who tend to have HIV are the same people who tend to be incarcerated most often. For the reason that these are, what these populations have in common, is that they tend to be falling through the cracks, really the gaping holes, in our social services system.”

Black prisoners are the hardest hit, suffering a disproportionately higher rate of HIV in prisons than other races.

“We simply shouldn’t be living in a society where our criminal justice system is blatantly racist at several different stages of the process.”

I contacted the Florida Department of Corrections and did not receive a response.

 

Leave a Reply

  • (will not be published)

XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

You may also like

student meal
Next school year Hillsborough public schools are offering free meals

Hillsborough Public Schools are offering students free meals for the...

Correspondence Through Poetry. A Mind-Numbing Week.

Father Verses Sons: A Correspondence in Poems by Herbert Gold...

The sound of change: Music’s influence on anti-war and human rights movements

Throughout history, music has served as a powerful catalyst for...

a man in a tye dye shirt talking on a radio microphone
Recreational pot for Florida is on the ballot this fall—let’s talk about it

In four months, Florida voters have the opportunity to vote...

Ways to listen

WMNF is listener-supported. That means we don't advertise like a commercial station, and we're not part of a university.

Ways to support

WMNF volunteers have fun providing a variety of needed services to keep your community radio station alive and kickin'.

Follow us on Instagram

Step Outside
Player position: