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69 Prison J. i (1989)

handle is hein.journals/prsjrnl69 and id is 1 raw text is: Preface When the editorial board of The Prison Journal asked me to guest edit the 1989 Spring-Summer and Fall-Winter issues of the Journal on the topic of prison sexuality, I immediately put out a call for manuscripts in several national academic and agency sources. In addition, letters were mailed to over 2,000 colleagues, university depar- ments, state, federal, and private prison systems, and persons engaged in research on issues of prison sexuality. The response was overwhelming. It validates the belief of the editorial board that more research on the topic of prison sexuality is being conducted than being printed. So many excellent manuscripts were received for this issue that it was difficult to accept some and not others. I benefited from outside reviews, but I take responsibility for the final publication decision. As I spoke with potential contributors, it became clear to me that the problem of AIDS in prison was being investigated in sufficient quantity, scope, and rigor that both issues of the Journal would justify contributions from several perspectives. Other ques- tions of prison sexuality, too, were being asked which would contribute to the literature. I chose, therefore, to structure both issues of the Journal with articles on AIDS in prison followed by articles on other dimensions to prison sexuality, some of which also carry consequences for sexually transmitted diseases but not always a focus of the investi- gator. In this issue, five articles focus on AIDS in prison, three on sexual assaults, one on prison treatment of sex offenders, one on female prisoners' problem solving, and two on conjugal visitation. I hope that the Fall-Winter issue will follow this same for- mat and expand the limits of our knowledge on topics of prison sexuality. The articles on AIDS in this issue proceed from the general to the specific. The ma- jority note that prisons have not become the breeding grounds for AIDS as was initially feared. So far, seroconversion in prison is rare. Blumberg considers the macro-issues of mandatory testing of prisoners for the AIDS virus, whether infected inmates should be segregated, confidentiality of results of HIV testing, distribution of condoms to inmates, and the release of prisoners with AIDS. Anderson reviews prison case law related to AIDS. Although the article out- lines the legal guideposts affecting inmate medical care, segregation, and failure to protect the general inmate population that prison administrators will want to know, it is also true that as medical knowledge of AIDS increases, what formed judicial de- cision making one year may be inadequate the next. In order to avoid liability, prison administrators must monitor the change in medical knowledge about AIDS for its im- pact on prisoner care. Three articles on AIDS focus on specific inmate groups. Gido profiles the epidemi- ological and demographic characteristics of 506 New York inmates who have died of AIDS from November 1981 through October 1987. More distressing than the profile itself is the finding that inmates with AIDS have survival rates that are less than half of the civilian population and declining rapidly. The adequacy of prison health-care resources has yet to be fully litigated. Dugdale and Peterson report on a blind and open seroprevalence study among inmates in the state prisons in Washington. The seropre- valence rates were 0.6 percent and 2.7 percent, respectively. The high seroprevalence rate in the open study reflects the desire for testing among inmates who know they are in high risk behavioral groups. The importance of proactive AIDS education builds across the articles and culminates in Lanier and McCarthy's study on the beliefs and attitudes of Alabama's incarcerated juvenile offenders about AIDS and the impact of an AIDS education program. The study shows that AIDS education programs are help- ful, but unless they are designed to focus on the special needs and problems of the tar- get group, they are likely to miss the youth who need them most. Lanier and McCarthy -1-

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