AIDS explosion in prison if new Bill is passed

OPPOSITION MP and former Health Minister Dr Hamza Rafeeq has predicted if the Offences Against the Person Bill is passed, there will be an increase of persons with the AIDS virus in the prison population. Rafeeq was responding to a presentation in favour of the Bill’s passage by Junior National Security Minister Fitzgerald Hinds in Parliament last Friday. Rafeeq, who expressed disappointment in Hinds’ presentation, said while AIDS created health, economic and developmental problems for TT, Government should be more interested in discussing the escalating crime situation, even though Prime Minister Patrick Manning said crime was temporary.

According to Rafeeq, the Bill sought to create a new category of crime, because it would criminalise HIV positive persons who engaged in unprotected sex without disclosing the status of their medical condition to their partners. Rafeeq warned Government if the purpose of the Bill was to stem the spread of HIV/AIDS in this country, then it (the Bill) was counterproductive to that effort because of the stigma and discrimination associated with the disease. These negative effects, he said, posed a serious problem and the Bill would only aggravate the issue. Under the Bill, he said, an HIV positive person who infects another person, causing death, can be charged with manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment if found guilty. 

One effect of this piece of legislation, he said, would be an increase of persons infected with the disease joining the prison population. With the existing deplorable prison conditions and shortage of prisons officers, Rafeeq questioned the issues of housing, protection, discrimination and medical care of those who enter prison as a result of the Bill. He also raised questions about the training of prisons officers to deal with the influx of HIV positive inmates. Addressing the “integrity” of the judicial system, Rafeeq said, in most instances the financial resources of a person convicted of murder or manslaughter are depleted by the time their matter reaches the Court of Appeal.

Regarding recent newspaper reports about Government’s refusal to pay for attorneys for representation at the Privy Council for those who could not afford it, Rafeeq said Government was putting the final appellate court out of the reach of the poor. If it is Government’s policy to allow only rich people like “drug lords” to have access to the Privy Council, Rafeeq said, then the administration of justice in this country has broken down. “This Government has created a society of violence,” Rafeeq said, and now wanted to hang people without due process. The Opposition, he said, refused to support the move by Government to deprive poor people of justice.