THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT GETS REAL ABOUT SEX BEHIND BARS

Thirteen million Americans have been convicted of felonies and spent time
in prison. The prison system now releases an astonishing 650,000 people
each year - more than the population of Boston or Washington. In city after
city, newly released felons return to a handful of neighborhoods where many
households have some prison connection.

The so-called prison ZIP codes have more in common than large populations
of felons or children who grow up visiting their mothers and fathers in
jail. These neighborhoods are also public health disaster areas and
epicenters of blood borne diseases like hepatitis C and AIDS. Infection
rates in these areas are many times higher than in neighborhoods short
distances away.

No one can say how many infections begin in prison. But the proportion
could be high given the enormous concentrations of disease behind bars and
the risky behaviors that inmates commonly practice. They carve tattoos in
themselves using contaminated tools borrowed from other inmates.

They inject themselves with drugs using dirty syringes.

The most common source of infection could easily be risky, unprotected sex,
which, despite denials by prison officials, is clearly a regular occurrence
behind bars. A recent study of male inmates in several prisons, for
example, found that more than 40 percent had participated in sexual
encounters with another man. Most of these inmates, by the way, viewed
themselves as heterosexual and planned to resume sex with women once they
got out of prison.

Prison systems in Canada and Europe have tried to cut down infection by
making condoms available to inmates. Prompted by research showing that
sterile syringes slow the spread of AIDS among intravenous drug users,
several countries have actually moved programs that supply clean needles
right into the prisons.

Public health officials who favor needle exchanges in the United States are
fully aware that this country has just emerged from a presidential election
that witnessed heightened activism by conservative Christians. Indeed, even
nonreligious Americans would prefer to see prisons shut off the flow of
illegal drugs and provide addicts with treatment instead of syringes.

The condom issue, however, seems somehow less explosive. But as of now,
condoms are banned or unavailable in 48 of 50 state prison systems, on the
theory that distributing them would condone illicit sex. When confronted
with public health data from abroad, American prison officials have
blithely suggested that all the fuss is overblown - because there is little
sex to speak of in jail.

Congress seemed comfortable with this fiction until 2001, when the Human
Rights Watch organization issued a grisly report titled "No Escape: Male
Rape in U.S. Prisons." The study suggested that rape accompanied by
horrific violence was a regular aspect of American prison life. Based
partly on the accounts of more than 200 prisoners in nearly 40 states, the
report told of prison officials who stood by while sexual predators raped
fellow inmates and sometimes sold them - as sex slaves - to gangs and other
inmates.

The study led directly to the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003, which
sailed through Congress and was signed into law by President Bush. The law,
which requires the Justice Department to collect data on prison rape and
develop a national strategy for combating it, provided a much needed
mechanism for weeding out sexual predators behind bars.

But this law is, at its heart, a public health law. It provides for grants
that could be used to underwrite public health initiatives - including
sorely needed studies of disease transmission in the criminal justice
system. The law has already resulted in fruitful discussions about
expanding disease testing and prevention behind bars.

Lawmakers find it easy to discuss prison sex in the context of rape because
everyone agrees that sexual assault is horrible and needs to be rooted out.
The conversation about consensual sex among inmates will be trickier to
handle. Even so, the law will inevitably force prison officials to confront
all the varieties of sexual contact that public health researchers have
known about for a long time.

The commission created by Congress to oversee the new law is just getting
started. But it has already brought some honesty to the historically
dishonest conversation about sexual behavior in prison. Commission members
who have spent time in the public health world, for example, are well aware
that people who participate in sex behind bars do so for a variety of
reasons. Some barter their bodies - and risk disease - in exchange for
protection from marauding gangs. Others perform sex acts in exchange for
necessities like soap, food and access to telephone calls.

Not all sex in prison, however, can be attributed to rape or bartering.
Recent research suggests that some of it is consensual among lonely inmates
who experience same-sex encounters for the first time - and for many of
them, the only time - while in prison.

The new law is pushing some states to create new strategies for dealing
with sexual assault in prison. But common sense tells us that sex among
inmates will not disappear even if rape and coercion are taken out of the
equation. That said, prison officials need to revisit rules that outlaw
condoms behind bars. These rules aid the spread of diseases that flourish
in prison - and then make the leap to the world outside.