Punishing Disease HIV and the Criminalization of Sickness [Hardcover]

From the very beginning of the epidemic, AIDS was linked to punishment. Calls to punish people living with HIV—mostly stigmatized minorities—began before doctors had even settled on a name for the disease.Punishing Diseaselooks at how HIV was transformed from sickness to badness under the criminal law and investigates the consequences of inflicting penalties on people living with disease. Now that the door to criminalizing sickness is open, what other ailments will follow? With moves in state legislatures to extend HIV-specific criminal laws to include diseases such as hepatitis and meningitis, the question is more than academic.

Trevor Hoppeis Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York, and a coeditor ofThe War on Sex. 

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments

Introduction. Punishment: AIDS in the Shadow of an American Institution

Part One: Punitive Disease Control

1. Controlling Typhoid Mary
2. “HIV Stops with Me”
3. The Public Health Police

Part Two: The Criminalization of Sickness

4. Making HIV a Crime
5. HIV on Trial
6. Victim Impact
Conclusion. Punishing Disease

Appendix 1. Methods: On Analyzing the Anatomy of a Social Problem
Appendix 2. State HIV Bills
Notes
Index

"What happens when a nation seduced by carceral solutions confronts a dreaded disease linked to sex and drugs? Trevor Hoppe’s thorough and well-documented analysis explains how and why legislators, courts, public health officials, and police across the United States have 'criminalized sickness' in the case of HIV/AIDS. Punishing Disease is a wake-up call about the dangers of punitive approaches to stopping the spread of disease."—Steven Epstein, author of Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the PoliticslÃu