New data from the Georgia Department of Corrections has found that more people between 1999-2020 have been impacted by Georgia’s HIV crime laws than previously reported, with the average cost to Georgia of incarceration alone adding up to over $9 million in the last two decades. 

The new analysis appears in an updated report from The Williams Institute UCLA School of Law that finds between 122 and 133 people have been incarcerated for an HIV crime in Georgia since 1988. This is a 61% to 76% increase in the previously reported number of 74 convictions. Much of the difference (26 cases) is the result of new data from 2017 to the present.

 According to The Williams Institute: 

• There has not been a reduction in the enforcement of Georgia’s HIV crime laws in recent years. 2017, 2018, and 2019, all saw above-average prison admissions; only twice in two decades was the number of admissions higher than in those years. 

• Over 72% of those incarcerated under Georgia’s HIV crime laws have been men. This is consistent with our 2018 report which found that 73% of those arrested for HIV crimes in Georgia were men. 

• The average sentence length for HIV crimes in Georgia was 8.3 years at the time of admission to prison. 

• On average, those incarcerated actually served 3.2 years, or 38.7% of their original sentence. 

Brad Sears, Founding Executive Director of the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law and author of the report: “HIV Criminalization in Georgia: Evaluation of Transmission Risk,” spoke with The Reckoning in April about his work to reform HIV-specific laws that many believe are rooted in bias against people of color, sexual minorities, and of course, those living with HIV. 

“In Georgia, almost two-thirds of the people who are being arrested and convicted are Black men and women — predominantly Black men. This is almost like HIV status as a proxy for race, said Sears.

“You have a disease that already disproportionately impacts Black people. Then you have the current criminal justice system that disproportionately impacts Black people, and you make a crime out of that disease, you've got a huge disproportionality.”

Georgia’s HIV criminal laws were passed in 1998 and 2003, and notably include oral sex and other forms of sex that have little to no risk of transmitting HIV. These laws do not consider the scientific advancement of antiretroviral drugs that have successfully suppressed the virus in the body, allowing people living with HIV to achieve undetectable status, placing their partner(s) at zero risk for transmission. HIV laws across the country have been amended several times, and according to Sears, "they just keep getting worse."

“At what point do you say these laws were never legitimate? They never had any intent beyond a kind of fear and prejudice of that time around HIV?” asked Sears. 

By carrying significant criminal penalties, according to Sears, HIV criminal laws “convey that the consequences of the disease are much more severe, if not fatal, despite the reality that, for most today, HIV is managed much like other chronic health conditions.”