4:10 p.m., Dec. 3, 2008----A new book by a University of Delaware researcher details the deadly circumstances -- the mass imprisonment that came with mandatory sentences, decreased prisoner rights, limited privatized medical care and the HIV epidemic -- that have made a horror of segregated HIV/AIDS wards at many American penitentiaries.

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“Dying Inside: The HIV/AIDS Ward at Limestone Prison” was written by Benjamin D. Fleury-Steiner, University of Delaware associate professor of sociology and criminal justice, with Carla Crowder, former investigative reporter for the Birmingham (Ala.) News, and was published by the University of Michigan Press.

The book looks specifically at the problems associated with Dorm 16, the ward for prisoners suffering from HIV/AIDS at Limestone Correctional Facility in Harvest, Ala.

However, Fleury-Steiner said the book sheds light not simply on one ward in one prison in one state but rather on a nationwide human rights crisis in which a marginalized segment of the population slowly dies of what he calls “lethal abandonment.”

Fleury-Steiner said the book grew from a research project on prisoner rights, during which he learned of the conditions at Limestone and began to focus on the complex issues that brought about Dorm 16, a nightmarish place where patients are chained to beds and share their space with insects and vermin in filthy, drafty rooms as contagious diseases spread like wildfire. For many prisoners, illness became a de facto death sentence.

Fleury-Steiner said Dorm 16, and similar such wards at prisons across the country, resulted from a confluence of factors both political and social.

Through the mid-1990s, the nation took a tough approach to crime through mandatory sentencing. Punishment, not rehabilitation, became the core imperative, Fleury-Steiner said.

That was coupled with the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which made it difficult for prisoners to challenge the conditions of their confinement.

On top of those changes was an HIV/AIDS epidemic fueled by rampant drug abuse and the sharing of needles, and a prison medical system limited by privatization.

Fleury-Steiner said the issue is “far more complex than good guys and bad guys.” He said prison medical officials often do their best but that they are overwhelmed by the circumstances.

“It is a systemic failure,” he said, “a catastrophic failure of our penal institutions. These are zones of lethal abandonment where prisoners with HIV are turned into ticking time bombs, and prisons all across the country suffer from such institutional failures.”

He said the situation is one of chaos, in which prisoners with HIV/AIDS are in need of highly specialized care but “are not even getting the fundamentals.”

As a result, many die, and Fleury-Steiner said they do so “in secret” because of shoddy record keeping.

Fleury-Steiner said the solution to the problem is a dramatic decrease in prison populations to enable administrators to cope with the public health crisis within their walls. Blocking this is a national will to punish and politicians who want to appear to be tough on crime.

Fleury-Steiner said he believes there must be a national debate on how America deals with marginalized populations, and particularly prisoners.

Fleury-Steiner received his doctorate in sociology from Northeastern University, where he also earned a bachelor's degree in criminal justice and a master's degree in sociology. He joined the UD faculty in 2000.

He is the author of an earlier book Jurors' Stories of Death: How America's Death Penalty Invests in Inequality, also published by the University of Michigan Press.

The authors plan to donate proceeds from Dying Inside to various charities, Fleury-Steiner said.

Article by Neil Thomas
Photo by Duane Perry