Landolt said that distributing condoms avoids the central problem leading to AIDS.
“AIDS is a tremendously serious health issue,” she emphasized. “They should be dealing with the problem, not trying to deal with the consequences. They should be monitoring the inmates to prevent them from carrying on this activity which is causing the AIDS.”
Landolt said that condoms “only encourage the inmates to be involved with this dangerous activity.”
Apparently Ms. Landolt thinks that telling prisoners not to engage in sexual activity means that they won't. I don't think it's news to anyone grounded in reality that sexual activity happens in prisons - regardless of what the regulations say. This has been the case for as long as prisons have been bigger than a few cells in a castle's cellar.
The reason for distributing condoms is simple - they work.
Ms. Landolt seems to be of the opinion that anything even remotely related to sexuality is automatically giving "permission" for sexual acts. It isn't, but just telling people not to engage in sexual acts isn't going to stop that either. I may not like the idea of sex happening in prison, but that doesn't mean it's going to stop either.
Ms. Landolt might want to consider the consequences of allowing our prisons to become a primary source of HIV infection. Does a prisoner infected with HIV have anything to lose when they get out of prison?
2 comments:
It's either condoms or we start with a pretty heavy hand on the death penalty. Considering how much money that would save, I'm kinda surprised they haven't suggested it...
Generally speaking these same "pro-life" people are also very strongly pro-death penalty ... the cognitive dissonance must be positively crippling.
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