Policy Solutions: ‹ First < 7 8 9
Public Policy Solution #9
Healthcare Services Should be Provided for Reentering Individuals, Including the Prevention, Screening, and Treatment of HIV/AIDS, Hepatitis C and Sexually Transmitted Diseases
Many incarcerated individuals are at high risk of becoming infected with HIV, hepatitis, or sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), and many others are already infected; such high rates of illness among the incarcerated and reentering populations stem from inadequate access to healthcare and in some cases past and continuing risky drug use (sharing syringes and other injection drug and alcohol equipment) and sexual behaviors (multiple sex partners, unprotected sex, and untreated STDs).1
1 “Drug Use, HIV, and the Criminal Justice System,” Center for Disease Control, IDU/HIV Prevention Project, August 2001, http://www.cdc.gov/idu/facts/druguse.htm
Developed by the Legal Action Center in Collaboration with the National Institute on
Drug Abuse (NIDA), National Institutes of Health/
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services