This document is intended to assist prosecution authorities in developing guidance to avoid the harmful use of the criminal law in relation to HIV and ensure the wise use of scarce prosecutorial resources. Although other sexually transmitted infections may raise similar concerns to HIV, it has overwhelmingly been cases involving HIV that have attracted prosecution and judicial commentary. As such, HIV-related prosecutions are the focus of this document.
Positive Women Revisited
In 2022, to mark the 10th anniversary of Positive Women, the HIV Legal Network went back to two of the protagonists featured in the original documentary to understand if and how criminalization was still part of their lives. Positive Women Revisited (2022) documents what it’s still like to live with the constant fear of prosecution, and why this needs to change for people living with HIV in Canada.
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.
A Spectacle of Stigma
A First-hand Account of a Canadian Criminal HIV Exposure Trial
HIV Criminalization in Canada: Key Trends and Patterns
Provides a snapshot of the temporal and demographic patterns of HIV criminalization in Canada from 1989 to 2020, also updating information on the outcomes of criminal cases. Finds people are often convicted in cases involving negligible or no risk of HIV transmission, and that criminal law is increasingly used against people living with HIV from marginalized populations.
Impact of Canadian human immunodeficiency virus non-disclosure case law on experiences of violence from sexual partners among women living with human immunodeficiency virus in Canada: Implications for sexual rights
Study measured the reported impact of HIV non-disclosure case law on violence from sexual partners among women living with human immunodeficiency virus in Canada. Findings bolster concerns that human immunodeficiency virus criminalisation is a structural driver of intimate partner violence, compromising sexual rights of women living with HIV. HIV non-disclosure case law intersects with other oppressions to regulate women’s sexual lives.
Beyond criminalization: reconsidering HIV criminalization in an era of reform
This paper reviews recent studies examining the application of HIV-specific criminal laws in North America (particularly the United States and Canada). In the wake of the development of new biomedical prevention strategies, many states in the United States (US) have recently begun to reform or repeal their HIV-specific laws. These findings can help inform efforts to ‘modernize’ HIV laws (or, to revise in ways that reflect recent scientific advances in HIV treatment and prevention).
Writing for digital news about HIV criminalization in Canada
This study examines the production of Canadian news media stories about HIV criminalization. Through institutional ethnographic interviews with journalists who produce news stories about HIV criminalization, this study brings into view that conditions of convergence journalism make it exceedingly difficult for reporters to disrupt the genre of crime stories about HIV criminalization in which stigmatizing discourses proliferate.
Centering Health, Respecting Rights: A Training Manual for Police
This training manual draws on current scientific evidence and best practices related to police education and HIV and HCV health and safety training. It is intended for use by police departments to assist them in meeting their professional obligations to provide safer service to people living with and affected by HIV and/or HCV.
Media reporting: HIV and the Criminal Law
This guide is an evidence-based resource to assist journalists in Canada in reporting responsibly and accurately about alleged HIV non-disclosure and resulting criminal cases.