At the end of the 5-year strategy in which countries around the world focused their AIDS response on reaching people living with HIV with testing and treatment services, this article provides an ecological analysis of whether those countries with criminalising legal environments achieved more or less success. It found that countries that have adopted a criminalising approach to key populations saw less success than those that chose not to criminalise. This analysis suggests a new global AIDS strategy that includes a focus on law reform may hold promise in achieving goals that were missed in 2020.