The Center for HIV Law and Policy (CHLP), a national leader on HIV legal issues and policy development, just announced the release of a new publication that catalogs and analyzes state and federal HIV criminal laws in the United States. HIV Criminalization in the United States: A Sourcebook on State and Federal HIV Criminal Law and Practice includes examples of recent prosecutions and explanations of the major cases applying these laws, along with text and analysis of state laws on other sexually transmitted diseases that involve criminal penalties or other restrictions for exposing another person to possible infection.
The Sourcebook was developed in response to state HIV law reform organizing developments and is the first resource for lawyers and other advocates to catalogue both state criminal law and public health law that punishes sexually transmitted disease exposure. In addition to the Sourcebook, CHLP’s website includes a separate page for each state summarizing relevant HIV and STI criminal law sections, so that users can download everything they need just for their state in addition to accessing the entire Sourcebook.
The Center for HIV Law and Policy will be co-hosting a webinar on October 11, 2017 to review ways to use the Sourcebook in HIV criminal reform efforts. The webinar also will explore some of the different strategic pathways to reform, along with benefits and drawbacks to those different options. The discussion will cover some of the key factors and questions to consider in deciding on what reform strategy makes the most sense in a given jurisdiction. (For more information on the webinar, email Kate Boulton at [email protected].)
