Under Lock and Key RAIL Radio Program for Feb 12 1999

Letters and facts about AIDS in prisons makes it clear: death
by disease is the new punishment

and California's prisons drive an HIV+ prisoner to suicide

Welcome to Under Lock and Key, news and commentary about
prisons from the Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist League. The U.$.
incarcerates a greater percentage of its population than any other
country. The rate for imprisonment of Blacks is 4 times that of
apartheid South Africa, and the U.$. sends more Black men to
prison than college. The purpose of this program is to educate
about, and inspire activism against, the Amerikan lockdown.

We should begin with some facts and statistics about HIV and
AIDS in Amerikan prisons.

AIDS is the main cause of death in Amerikan prisons.

The life expectancy of HIV+ prisoners is half that of HIV+ non-
prisoners.

The number of new cases of AIDS among state and Federal
prisoners is 20 times the rate in the population at large.

AIDS prevalence is seven times higher in state and federal
prisons than in the general U.S. population.

In California, 7.5% of prisoners have HIV. That's 90 times the
rate in the population at large.

California prisons which do not have special units for HIV+
prisoners provide no HIV/AIDS education.

 Injection drug use is the leading risk factor for AIDS/HIV in
prisons and jails throughout the country, and one-quarter of prisoners
have used needles to inject drugs. Nearly half of those prisoners who
use  illegal drugs have shared needles.

Few California prisons supply condoms and none supply bleach
kits to sterilize needles to inmates. Unprotected sex and sharing dirty
needles are two important ways that HIV is transmitted.

More than 22 million people are released each year from
Amerikan jails and prisons. 90% of all prisoners are eventually
released.



So we can take away some basic truths from these facts.

Prisoners with HIV and AIDS do not receive adequate medical treatment.
Prisoners  with HIV and AIDS are discriminated against. At the same time, the
HIV/AIDS epidemic is generally ignored and prophylactic measures from
counseling to condoms and clean needles are not available. And just as in the
population outside prison walls, those who are principally affected by HIV and
AIDS are men and wimmin from oppressed Black, Latino and First nations.

Prisoncrats boast about the medical care they provide
prisoners. As the facts we just read make clear, there is nothing
to brag about. Prisoncrats are masters at smoke and mirrors not at
medical care. A deeper focus on how HIV and AIDS are treated (or
not treated) in prison makes this even clearer.

Protease inhibitors are the state-of-the-art treatment for HIV
infection. 90% of state prison systems claim to provide protease
inhibitors, but that doesn't mean 90% of inmates with HIV are
receiving these treatments. According to Frederick Altice,
director of Yale's HIV in Prison Program,

"If a prison has just one patient on a protease inhibitor, they
can say 'Yes, we provide it.'"

And in California, the Department of
Corrections brags about its state-of-the-art hospital at
Corcoran prison, where many HIV+ prisoners have
been transferred. But inmate David Irvin says,

"No one is in the hospital. You have to be dying to get in
there. Even the staff complain about it."

One problem with HIV/AIDS care in prisons is the lack of
medicine. Some prisons only offer sub-standard therapy, others only offer one
kind of protease inhibitor. If you were already taking another drug, or
if you have a toxic reaction to the drug offered - too bad. When
prisoners are transferred from one prison to another - as is common - they
can go weeks without medications. And staff often withholds medication
as a form of punishment. Intermittent medication, switching from one drug
to the other - these things, besides making the treatment ineffective,
actually cause the HIV virus to become resistant to treatment. Some AIDS
activists have started to call Texas prisons "resistance factories,"
because they believe that the so-called "treatment" Texas prisoners receive
will spread strains of HIV which are resistant to current therapies among
prisoners and non-prisoners alike.

Another problem with HIV/AIDS care in prisons is the shortage
of medical staff. Inmates often have to wait four to six weeks to see
medical personnel. The largest wimmin's prison in the world is the
Central California Women's Facility, known as Chowchilla. There is
no gynecololgist at Chowchilla to treat its 3500 wimmin prisoners.
Gynecological complications are common among
wimmin with HIV/AIDS.

The staff who are there are often untrained and uncaring. At
Corcoran, a prisoner died of a heart attack "after complaining repeatedly
of chest pains." Staff told him he had acid indigestion.

In the case of AIDS, staff cannot (or refuse to) recognize
common opportunistic infections. A prisoner at Chowchilla, Linda
Cortez, developed AIDS-related herpes zoster on her leg, "which looked
like a series of dark red, blistering cigarette burns, but  the doctor
wouldn't admit her to the infirmary. The herpes spread to her eyes and
she went blind." Herpes zoster is a common AIDS complication which is
easily treated and should never lead to permanent disability. Once
Cortez was completely blind, "no one acknowledged that she couldn't see,
or taught her how to get around, or made sure that she got breakfast" Cortez
weighed 92 pounds when she was released from prison. Here is how Cortez
describes her care at Chowchilla:

"I'll put it like this: If you were dying of thirst
and I stuck you in the desert with no water, how would you
feel? You would die from dehydration. To put it even more bluntly: They didn't
give a F---."

Finally, the dominant anti-prisoner, "lock-em-up-and-throw-
away-the-key" ideology prevents prisoners from getting adequate medical care.
This clearly contributes to a lack of funds for medicine and caring
staff, and contributes directly to all kinds of abuses. For example,
guards at Corcoran spitefully deny prisoners crushed ice in their cells,
despite the fact that several prisoners have died of heat prostration in
the past few years.

On top of all this, HIV+ prisoners face discrimination. In
California, HIV+ prisoners are segregated from the general population and
stigmatized. As a result, prisoners do not want to get tested and keep their
HIV status hidden. Staff at Corcoran refer to HIV+ prisoners as "faggot
motherF's," and one prison dentist will not treat HIV+
prisoners. HIV+ prisoners are not allowed overnight family visits with their
spouses, and on and on.

Adequate heath care is a non-negotiable right. Certainly it is
possible to provide prisoners with adequate HIV/AIDS care. But the ideology
which considers prisoners less than
humyn and the increasing role that the profit motive plays in
prisons denies them care. Prisoners should receive the same standard of
care that non-prisoners do. Prisoners should also have access to basic
measures which stop the spread of HIV, such as clean needles and
condoms.

As this report has already implied, all prisoners are denied
the basic medical care to which they are entitled. In effect, this means
that people are being unjustly sentenced to death for increasingly petty
"crimes."

And this does not just affect prisoners, either. Since 90% of
prisoners are eventually released, infectious epidemics inside will
spread on the outside as well. The fact that members of oppressed nations are
disproportionately arrested and imprisoned makes this
particularly disturbing. Conscious policy or not, callous disregard for the
spread of HIV in prison amounts to biological warfare against oppressed
nations and is one of the reasons RAIL says Amerikan prisons are a tool of
genocide.

Ultimately, the best way to ensure adequate health care for
prisoners is to overturn the systems of oppression which intersect in
Amerikan prisons: National oppression. National oppression denies economic
opportunity in Black, Latino, First Nation and other communities
and locks people from these nations up at disproportionate rates.
And finally capitalism, which places profit before humyn needs
must be abolished.


California's dungeons drive HIV+ prisoner to suicide


In December, California prisoner Michael Van Straaten hanged
himself in front of prison staff in order to protest the treatment
he and other California prisoners with HIV/AIDS receive. Guards
found him hanging in the corner of his cell and watched him for 18
minutes before they entered to pronounce him dead. His body was
still warm and limber when they cut it down.(1)

Van Straaten, a 32-year old Canadian citizen, was transferred
in the mid-90s to the HIV+ unit at Corcoran State Prison, which
holds 230 prisoners. California is one of only three states that
segregate their HIV+ inmates by housing them in separate units in
each prison.(2) Corcoran has become a dumping ground for HIV+
patients.

Corcoran's HIV+ unit is infamous for its poor health care.
Prisoners get sub-standard treatment and their viral loads are not
adequately monitored. The first AIDS fatality at Corcoran died of
an easily treatable opportunistic infection. One former prisoner
wrote, "Even with signs of the yeast infection in his mouth, his
condition went untreated... He was allowed to remain in his cell
for almost three weeks unattended and unmonitored by the medical
staff. He condition rapidly worsened, he developed pneumonia and
his lungs filled. By the time he was taken to the hospital he had
wasted away to near nothing. He lasted three days in the
hospital."(3)

Another prisoner at the unit wrote,

"My greatest concern about Corcoran is that once I got very
sick, I would not receive proper care, and I would die
miserably."(2)

Van Straaten claimed that his medications for his seizures and
HIV were delayed and sometimes denied. With the help of California
prisoners' rights activists, friends and family in Canada, and
even the Canadian embassy, Van Straaten was fighting to be
transferred to the medical facility at Vacaville, or a prison in
Canada. His requests for transfer were repeatedly denied for
several years.

Just before he comitted suicide, Van Straaten was again denied
a transfer and was placed in solitary confinement following an
epileptic seizure.

Fellow prisoners said that the first two guards to arrive at
the cell "actually yelled at him to come down, to stop his
suicide." Van Straaten was pronounced dead 20 minutes later, after
guards had taken no action to aid him.(4)

Van Straaten's frustration, the terrible medical care prisoners
with AIDS receive, and guards callous disregard for Van Straaten's
very life are the results of a system which considers prisoners to
be slaves or bodies to be warehoused or worse. The dramatic four-
fold expansion of the Amerikan prison population has been fueled
in large part by harsh sentences for drug users - a population at
high risk for HIV infection. The result is that many people
already given outrageous sentences for petty, non-violent crimes
in effect receive a death sentence, thanks to the poor care HIV+
prisoners receive.

We understand the desperation of prisoners like Van Straaten
who see no alternative to protest the system that is torturing and
killing them and many others. But we value the lives of our
fighting comrades and encourage all who want to protest the
injustice system to join with RAIL for the long fight. Work with
us to expose the system and organize others into the struggle.
Send us news and information about what's going on in your prison;
get this program on other stations; form study groups and work
with us and other prisoners in the legal fight, while we build a
revolutionary movement to take down the injustice system.



Illinois Prisoner writes on AIDS

There has been some misinformation circulating about HIV/AIDS
and prisoners. It's a shame that the medical profession does not
pay attention to the needs of prisoners. It alarms me because if
many of the illnesses are properly treated inside prisons, ex-
prisoners would not be passing on many of the diseases they catch
in prison, which is a method of how HIV/AIDS is being transmitted
in society. The American Correctional Systems does not want
informative HIV/AIDS, T.B., or Hepatitis information available
because they want prisoners to be in the blind about such
diseases. There is no doubt that passing out such information
would curtail these types of diseases.

I am wondering does society really have an idea of exactly what
goes on inside prisons? Evidently they don't, and this lack of
knowledge is weighing heavy against prisoners because they have no
avenues to gain adequate medical treatment, and often die for
minor illnesses that a poor person would be cured for in society.

[The] article entitled "HIV/AIDS Behind Bars" by David S.
MacDougall, printed in the "Journal of the International
Association of Physicians in AIDS Care," April 1998 issue, for the
most part touched on the substantial problem with some good
suggestions as to prevention and issuing informative data.
However, about three quarter ways through the article, it referred
to the very organizations that use prisoners as "guinea pigs"
without the prisoner being aware of exactly what experiments they
are conducting on prisoners. Isn't this some type of crime?
Infected needles are being used to withdraw blood, when the
solution given to determine if a prisoner has T.B., prisoners are
not being injected with HIV/AIDS, and Hepatitis, Why? To test new
drugs!

Abt Associations, the Center for Disease Control and
Prevention, American Correctional Association, along with
Illinois, intentionally gave prisoners HIV/AIDS, T.B., and
Hepatitis. The cause and affect was being watched, while prisoners
were at danger. [The AP news article pertaining to the Illinois
Supreme Court's resurrection of a lawsuit by a prisoner showing
HIV infection by the state] clearly indicates what happened. [And]
the Illinois law makers knew of the problem. Illinois State
Representative Cal Skinner, said,

"Extrapolating the study's findings to the Illinois adult male
inmates individuals over 100 men a year are receiving what I call
'an unadjudicated death sentence' each year."

This was an understatement because 200-350 prisoners die yearly
of HIV/AIDS, and Hepatitis. We are explored without our knowledge
just because society and the medical profession has turned their
eyes and turned off their ears to this alarming problem.

Majority of the drugs society uses are tested on prisoners
before they reach the market for society. Prisoners are not aware
because prison administrators want them ignorant. Each of these
diseases are taken back to society.

Until society as a whole takes notice of this problem, and
prisoners start refusing to accept withdrawal of blood, T.B.
tests, or any treatment that involves a needle without seeing the
actual needles, or knowing what they are being shot with, will
they receive adequate medical care. The voice prisoners need is to
shock the public to understand that we are not crash dummies or
guinea pigs.
--Written by an Illinois Prisoner and founder of Prisoners'
Health Watch

PRISONER DENIED PROTEASE INHIBITORS

I'm in close management and I'm locked up 24-7 and
get two days of yard with 3 hours of yard time, and
3 showers a week.

I'm HIV positive and I'm having problems trying to
get the new life saving drug called protease
inhibitors because they don't want to give it. It's
very expensive, but at the same time, there's a
white dude here that is receiving the life saving
cocktail called protease inhibitors. If I get this
new medication then I have a chance to live longer.
I have filed two lawsuits on the medication because
they refused me but it's FDA approved and [the white] Prisoner
 is getting it. There's no reason why I can't get
it....

In struggle,

 -- A Florida Prisoner



This has been Under Lock and Key, a weekly Revolutionary Anti-
Imperialist League program about prisons. For more information,
contact: RAIL PO Box 712 Amherst MA 01004, or email
RAILRadio@mim.org.