August 2002

Texas Educates Prisoners

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice and AIDS Foundation Houston held a conference in July to educate state prisoners about HIV/AIDS and other infectious disease. More than 125 inmates from 16 prisons attended the first conference of this kind ever held in the U.S. The goal is that the prisoners, who volunteered to be peer educators, will pass on the information from the conference to other inmates and people they meet after release. The attendees had already had 40 hours of classroom training on HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, and tuberculosis before the conference.

The HIV prevalence rate in prisons is higher than the rate outside of prison. According to a report in the Houston Chronicle, last year the Texas system released 575 HIV-positive prisoners.