Aboriginal people and incarceration issues related to HIV/AIDS, hepatitis C and residential schooling

An overview of the healing lodges is found in Appendix 1. The first part of this paper looks at the issues affecting the prevalence of HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis C in the Canadian correctional system. [...] Outright government acknowledgement of the activities that occur within the correctional system and the prison environment has been limited; as Ralf Jürgens notes, the lack of government acknowledgement has been detrimental to the prevention and reduction in the spread of HIV in prisons. [...] Thus, the failure of government to address the issue of contributing factors to the transmission of HIV and other diseases such as HCV, is at the heart of the continuing epidemic amongst incarcerated individuals. [...] Leaving aside the implementation of bleach availability in prisons, the disrepute attached to obtaining the bleach may, in fact, undermine the effectiveness of the program. [...] The large numbers of Native people in the prison system, high rates of IVDU [intravenous drug use] and needle sharing in prisons, presence of HIV in the prison population, and the increasing proportion of Aboriginal AIDS cases attributed to IVDU all point to an emerging HIV epidemic in Aboriginal communities.