According to a recent report by the Williams Institute, eighteen individuals who were living with HIV in Indiana were arrested for donating plasma between 2001 and 2019. However, none of these individuals posed a risk of transmitting the virus thanks to the implementation of effective screening methods.
The University of California, Los Angeles School of Law is home to the Williams Institute, a distinguished research center that specializes in exploring the legal and public policy aspects of sexual orientation and gender identity.
The unfair practice of HIV criminalization involves the discriminatory use of laws to target individuals who have contracted HIV, particularly those from marginalized groups such as African-Americans, Latinos, LGBTQ people, and women. These laws aim to punish people because of their HIV status, rather than their actions. Unfortunately, people with HIV can be sentenced to prison under outdated laws even if the virus was not transmitted and their only alleged offense was failure to disclose their status.
According to a news release, the Williams Institute’s most recent report titled “Enforcement of HIV Criminalization in Indiana: Donation Laws” thoroughly examined data from Indiana courts, studying individuals who have been arrested and prosecuted for an HIV-related donation crime in the state. This report is one of the first to comprehensively analyze the enforcement of HIV criminal donation laws within a single U.S. state.
At present, Indiana has a total of six laws that criminalize individuals who are living with HIV. The recently released report sheds light on the adverse effects of the laws that prohibit individuals with HIV from donating blood, plasma, and semen for artificial insemination purposes.
Between 2001 and 2023, data on the implementation of these laws was scrutinized by researchers. A total of 18 individuals who were living with HIV were charged with 21 violations of the state’s criminal donation law during this period. These violations were all related to their efforts to donate at a plasma center, despite the fact that no cases of HIV transmission from plasma donation have been reported in the last 40 years.
According to the report, Indiana’s HIV criminalization donation laws have resulted in the prosecution of people living with HIV for actions that do not actually pose a risk of HIV transmission.
Back in the early days of the HIV epidemic, fear and a lack of scientific knowledge about the virus had a significant impact on the laws created to address the issue. This was the case with Indiana’s HIV-related donation laws, which were put in place in 1988 and 1989, a time when effective testing and treatment for HIV were not readily available.
Today, we have come a long way and now understand that individuals who are HIV positive but adhere to their medication regimen and maintain an undetectable viral load cannot transmit the virus through sexual contact. This concept is known as Undetectable Equals Untransmittable, or U=U.
The report reveals some significant findings, including:
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- No cases involved attempts to donate whole blood or semen.
- No people were charged under the provision of the code penalizing actual HIV transmission.
- In total, 17 of the 18 people charged suffered from poverty and were assigned a public defender.
- More than four-fifths (89%) of people arrested were convicted of at least one HIV-related crime.
The data pertaining to demographics indicated that:
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- The range for age at time of arrest was between 20 and 58 years old; the average age at time of arrest was 33 years old.
- Men made up 72% of people arrested, while women made up 28%.
- Black people made up nearly eight in 10 (78%) of all people arrested. White people were the remainder (22%) of those arrested. However, Black people made up only 38% of people living with HIV in Indiana in 2021 and just 10% of the state’s population. No other race/ethnicity group was represented among those arrested.
The criminalization laws have the potential to weaken state initiatives aimed at assisting and empowering communities that are most affected by the HIV epidemic. As per the report, the criminal law has not been put into action since 2019, which could indicate a decrease in the utilization of Indiana’s HIV-linked donation offenses.
Lead author Nathan Cisneros emphasized the need for modernizing state HIV criminal laws to align with the current HIV science, stating, “Ending the HIV epidemic requires modernizing state HIV criminal laws to reflect what is known about HIV science today,” in the news release.
