Drawing on cross-sectional data from 895 people living with HIV in Australia, this paper describes associations between standard measures of mental health and resilience with a newly devised scale measuring anxiety about HIV criminalisation. Findings suggest that laws criminalising HIV transmission have a broadly negative impact on wellbeing of people living with HIV, a situation that is exacerbated for gay and bisexual men, and other people living with HIV who may face intersecting forms of marginalisation based on race, gender or class.
The System Is Broken – Audit of Australia’s Mandatory Testing Laws
Audit, led by Sally Cameron, HIV Justice Network’s Senior Policy Analyst, on behalf of HJN and the National Association of People with HIV Australia (NAPWHA) revealing that mandatory testing laws are at odds with national HIV testing policy and are operating outside the structured and highly successful HIV responses managed by clinicians and departments of health. The audit found that in many instances, the laws, their implementation, and monitoring include numerous structural failures, usually occurring in multiple states.
The HIV Media Guide
Provides journalists with tools to ensure that media reports on HIV are accurate and sensitive. With tips for best practice, links to useful resources and a section on HIV criminalisation.
Police and Blood-Borne Viruses
Contains information about blood-borne viruses including how they are spread, how to protect against infection and what to do if there is a possible exposure. Written to provide information and guidance, it does not supersede policies and procedures of policing agencies.
HIV, Crime and the Law in Australia: Options for Policy Reform – a law reform advocacy kit
Divided into two sections, section two is an advocacy kit (pages 14-19). Includes possible actions to enable the development of better laws and policies, and improved practices on the part of the agencies enforcing existing laws.
Repealing Section 19A: How we got there
Provides first-hand account of advocacy to reform Victoria’s (Australia) Crimes Act.
Gay Men and HIV Disclosure
Outlines issues associated with HIV disclosure, including an overview of laws in all Australian states and territories.
Zaburoni v The Queen
Clarifies that recklessness regarding HIV transmission risk is not the same as intention to transmit HIV. This ruling means that if people are convicted of having sex without disclosing their HIV status, they will be convicted of lesser charges with lower penalty.
HIV, Crime and the Law in Australia: Options for Policy Reform – a law reform advocacy kit
Divided into two sections, outlines the operation and effect of Australian public health law, criminal law and civil law in relation to HIV related prosecutions. Part 1 – pages 2-13. (Part two, is an advocacy kit including recommendations.)
“I don’t blame that guy that gave it to me”: Contested discourses of victimisation and culpability in the narratives of heterosexual women infected with HIV
Considers how heterosexual women living with HIV make sense of their HIV acquisition, challenging the victim–culprit binary. None of the women interviewed presented themselves as ‘victims’ in any straightforward sense or placed the blame squarely on the men who likely infected them, including men who had not disclosed. Instead, the women’s narratives revealed themes of “mutual vulnerability” and far more ambivalent allocations of responsibility. The tendency to position women who become infected with HIV as ‘victims’ obscures the complex realities of gender and sexual practice.