Prisons to Offer Inmates HIV Testing

By Sabrina Barekzai, Capital News Service Monday, March 21, 2011

RICHMOND – Virginia prison inmates will be offered HIV testing within 60 days of their scheduled discharged from a correctional facility.

Two identical bills passed by this year’s General Assembly require the Virginia Department of Corrections to offer such HIV testing. Prisoners will have the right not to be tested.

“This will allow inmates to know their HIV status in order to reduce transmissions to others and to better link them with HIV care services upon release. Previously incarcerated persons with HIV are less likely to return to the criminal justice system if they are linked with health care services,” said Delegate Rosalyn Dance, D-Petersburg.

Dance sponsored one of the measures – House Bill 1688. An identical proposal, Senate Bill 1258, was carried by Sen. Jill Holtzman Vogel, R-Winchester. Both bills passed unanimously in both the House and Senate. They are now on Gov. Bob McDonnell’s desk to be signed into law.

According to an analysis of the legislation by the state Department of Planning and Budget, “the Department of Corrections currently will test an inmate for HIV only if the inmate requests it or if there is any clinical indication of HIV.”

Under the legislation, if soon-to-be-discharged inmates agree to be tested, they initially will be given a test called the EIA, which screens for the presence of HIV. That tests costs less than $4, according to legislative budget analysts.

To confirm the HIV virus, the prison system then would conduct a second test called the “Western blot,” which costs more than $49.

As a result of the legislation, Virginia officials estimate that they will do EIA tests on about 8,000 prisoners a year and that 1 percent will test positive for the human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. Those 80 inmates then would be offered the Western blot test.

The Virginia prison system’s HIV testing program would cost about $33,000 a year, budget analysts said.