Spreading AIDS in prison?

We in Texas [are no longer] allowed to have sexually explicit material to get us through these months of incarceration. The significance of this policy will be telling. Prisons are already infested with weaknesses of the flesh in the form of homosexuality. Now with no self-gratifying material being allowed, homosexuality will rise horrifyingly, which also means HIV and AIDS will be very much in evidence. It's bad comrades and getting worse. What can be done to stop this criminal genocide?

I am absolutely convinced there is complicity between the corrections institution and the medical branches. I have first hand knowledge that HIV infections are being transmitted among the prison population by way of unprotected sexual intercourse. Known homosexual HIV carriers are being housed with non-infected prisoners and soliciting and/or engaging in unprotected sex with non-infected prisoners. The majority of non-infected prisoners that are vulnerable are short-timers. Many of these short-term prisoners are bi-sexual, which means that once they are released back to our communities they bring with them infections that ultimately place unexpected females at risk of exposure. This is compounded by ignorance, promiscuity, and high sexual activity.

There are obviously medical records that are available in prison hospitals that would make these HIV carriers easily identifiable. The prison administrators are aware of this yet all operations concerning the interaction of prisoners condone, promote, and encourage homosexual activity. There's no major concern because most of these prisoners being infected are from poor communities and upon their release are for certain going back to poor communities.

The only best thing for organizations like MIM to do is promote segregation of these HIV-infected homosexuals and publishing warning bulletins system- wide. I call on all the vanguard revolutionary organizations to sound off your drums about this conspiracy to kill us all off. This is germ warfare.

-- A Texas prisoner, May 2004

MIM responds: The transmission of HIV and other diseases like hepatitis within prisons is a huge problem, and it does create epidemic effects throughout the oppressed-nation communities of the prisoners. And the prison system and its administrators must be held accountable for this. Further, MIM objects to banning pornography in prison, as censorship of anything leads to political censorship in this system.

However, we do not think banning pornography or sex between men are the real problems here. Nor do we see homosexuality as a "weakness of the flesh" any more than is heterosexuality. And segregating prisoners based on HIV status alone is not necessary or fair to HIV-positive prisoners who do not commit rapes.

The problems are rape in general, lack of education needed to understand and prevent transmission, and lack of the preventive health care needed to protect people from infection. The prison administrators, along with the other institutions of imperialism, are largely responsible for all of these problems. If rape were effectively prohibited instead of condoned or promoted, and if health care and sex education were widespread rights and practices -- and if the unjust imprisonment of large proportions of oppressed nation communities was not the law of the land -- then the transmission of HIV and other diseases through the prison population would not be such an epidemic problem. Of course, the prison administration should be held accountable for the effects of their actions.