(Guardian) The last thing you want to find out when you're serving out a jail sentence for drug possession is that you are HIV positive. That is what happened to Waheedah Shabbazz-El, a former US postal worker who developed a serious drug addiction that ultimately led to her being sent to prison for six months.
"Jail is a terrible place to find out you have Aids," Waheedah said. She later learned that as an incarcerated African American, she already had two strikes against her when it came to the likelihood of being diagnosed with HIV. Increasingly, it seems the two issues are more than a little intertwined.
The rate of HIV among prisoners in America is five to seven times higher than it is among the general population, with African Americans and African-American women, in particular, having far higher rates of infection than any other group. Black Americans are seven times more likely than white Americans to become infected.
