Carrie Foote
Professor of SociologySociology
ude[dot]iupui[at]etoof
Indiana HIV Criminal Law Enforcement Research: Translating Data into Community Legislative Action
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Indiana State Department of Health’s Ending the HIV Epidemic Plans aim to reduce HIV transmission by 90% by 2030 and, to reach this goal, calls for modernizing outdated HIV-related public health and criminal statutes. In response many states have begun to reform or repeal their HIV-specific laws, including here in Indiana. Although the Indiana General Assembly has made great progress in modernizing Indiana’s HIV public health laws, attempts to modernize the criminal code have stalled for the last four years. One challenge has been the lack of Indiana specific data supporting changes to the code. The purpose of my scholarship is to address this challenge by conducting a timely, innovative, and comprehensive analyses of existing criminal history records from the Indiana state courts to analyze the real-world application of HIV-specific criminal laws in Indiana. This project analyzes court data patterns across time, geography, sentence rates and conviction rates, and determine whether there was disproportionate use of the laws based on sex, race/ethnicity and/or age. This project also examines the degree to which Indiana’s HIV criminal laws reflect HIV-related biomedical treatment and prevention advances since the laws were enacted as well as whether they reflect best criminal justice law practices. This research is the very first study to use Indiana court data to identify how disease specific punitive laws are enforced from incident through sentencing and whether court processes are fairly applied to people living with HIV. Findings are informing ongoing timely efforts to modernize (i.e., reform) Indiana’s HIV related criminal policies and laws. In addition, Dr. Foote has built and leads a statewide network of advocates working to modernize Indiana's HIV criminal laws known as the HIV Modernization Movement-Indiana. More information can be found on HMM-Indiana's website. https://hivmodernizationmovement.org/