Prisoners and AIDS

A court in Karelia has released an HIV-positive prisoner on parole based on a medical conclusion regarding the need for urgent treatment. In addition to HIV, he was diagnosed with tuberculosis and three forms of hepatitis simultaneously – B, C, and D. Human rights activists claim that, as a rule, courts ignore the impossibility of obtaining treatment in a correctional facility.

Immediately after his release, the man was admitted to a civilian hospital, where he remains. Lawyers believe this precedent-setting decision could open the way to freedom for another 39,000 convicts living with HIV.

As a former prisoner told the newspaper ‘Novye Izvestiya’, correctional facilities lack the drugs necessary for HIV therapy; patients with AIDS are forced to work with everyone else and are not provided with the high-calorie diet required by law.

According to the former prisoner, doctors at the treatment and correctional facility No. 4, located in the Segezha district of Karelia, admitted that they were unable to treat him. “Prison phthisiatricians know how to treat tuberculosis, but they do not understand AIDS at all. I have seen for myself how the livers of many HIV-positive people failed from traditional treatment or they were struck by fungi,” he said.

Lawyers note that there is an article in the Code of Criminal Procedure that allows for the mitigation of punishment based on health conditions or release from it entirely.

However, in practice, it is almost never applied. One lawyer informed the publication that in his memory, only one cancer patient in the final stage of the disease was released, “so that he would not die in prison.”

Human rights activists claim that, as a rule, courts ignore the impossibility of obtaining treatment in a correctional facility, writes NEWSru.com.

According to data from the Federal Penitentiary Service (FSIN), there are 39,000 HIV-positive people in places of deprivation of liberty – 10% of the carriers of this virus registered in Russia (according to experts, official data are underestimated by 5–10 times). 90% of HIV carriers in prison are intravenous drug users; many of them are sick with tuberculosis or hepatitis in addition to HIV. Lawyers believe that the current decision may open a path to freedom for them. At the same time, they note that the majority of prisoners with severe illnesses do not have the money to hire an expert who could convince the court of their dire condition.

Lawyers note that this decision may also affect the fate of the AIDS-stricken former vice-president of Yukos, Vasily Aleksanyan. He has been in an oncology clinic since February of this year due to lymphoma, and his spleen was removed just recently. However, as experts note, if there is a directive to repress, then the court will not take any illnesses into account.