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Jail condoms draw fire in
U.S., Namibia
 09 Jan 2006- AIDS activists blame a law banning male-to-male sex
for preventing condom distribution and HIV-prevention efforts in
Namibia's prisons. Advocates for condom distribution have run into
opposition from government officials who see their efforts as promoting
homosexual activity, citing a 30-year old law banning sex between men.
"By giving (prisoners) a condom, you are telling them
to go ahead and do it," Ignatius Mainga, a spokesman for Namibia's
ministry of safety and security, told the paper. But Michaela Hubscle,
former deputy minister of the Ministry of Prisons and Correctional
Services, insisted that condom distribution is key to preventing an HIV
"time bomb."
Correctional facilities are a key front in halting the
spread of HIV in the impoverished southern African country -- where
statistics show that nearly 20 percent of the nation is infected -- but
attitudes about same-sex activity are hindering that effort, according
to HIV prevention activists.
In the United States, HIV prevention advocates see
strong similarities to their fight to distribute condoms in correctional
facilities.
Julie Davids, executive director of CHAMP, a New
York-based community HIV/AIDS mobilization project, said that, unlike in
most correctional facilities abroad, programs like condom distribution
are unavailable in the vast majority of U.S. jails and prisons.
"(Correctional facilities) in the U.S. say the same
things they say in Namibia -- that condoms will condone sex and increase
prisoner rape," she told the PlanetOut Network. "But if they really
wanted to prevent prison rape, there are a lot of things they can do and
aren't." Davids pointed to the Prison Rape Elimination Act passed by
Congress last year, but rarely implemented due to lack of accountability
across a wide variety of state, federal and municipal correctional
systems.
The federal government estimates that about 30 percent
of federal male prison inmates engage in sex acts -- consensual or not
-- with other male inmates. However, most correctional facilities do not
track incidents of sex.
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