Covering Risk: HIV Criminalization and Condoms

While some policymakers and courts have recognized condom use as sufficient to negate possibility of HIV transmission, people living with HIV in Canada remain at risk of prosecution for alleged non-disclosure before sex with a condom. While the law may be unsettled, the science and policy reasons are clear: prosecuting people living with HIV who use condoms is unscientific and unfair. Law- and policymakers must act to definitively preclude prosecutions against people living with HIV who use condoms.

HIV Criminalization – Human Rights Fact sheet Series

Series of fact sheets on human rights highlighting the critical need to scale up action on rights. Short, easy to digest and accessible document outlining the latest epidemiology, the evidence of the impact of human rights interventions, the latest targets, and international guidelines, recommendations and human rights obligations.

Other factsheets in the same series released in June 2021 include: HIV and people who use drugs, HIV and gay men and who have sex with other men, HIV and transgender and other gender-diverse people, HIV and sex work, HIV and people in prisons and other closed settings and HIV and stigma and discrimination.

HIV Criminalization in California: What We Know

Highlights significant findings about Californian criminal law including that more than 800 people have come in contact with California’s criminal system based on their HIV status, with 93% of convictions requiring no proof of conduct likely to transmit HIV. Also finds HIV criminal statutes are disparately enforced based on race/ethnicity, sexuality and gender.

Spit Does Not Transmit: A Fact Sheet for Law Enforcement Personnel, The Center for HIV Law and Policy, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys (2013)

This 2013 factsheet produced by the Center for HIV Law and Policy, the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and the Association of Prosecuting Attorneys provides current factual information about the HIV transmission risks law enforcement professionals may face in the line of duty (aiming to address the frequent overstating of risk). States there is no known case of a law enforcement officer being infected in the line of duty through spitting or biting.

HIV Criminalization: Are You At Risk?

Palm card by the Positive Justice Project outlining basic information about HIV criminalisation, how to protect yourself from possible prosecution, and what to do if arrested.