Stop Abusing WOMEN in Alabama Prisons!

TG Green

Mom gets behind on bills 2 small kids she does some desperate things to help feed the kids an ends up with a felony in Alabama Prison for women she wasn't a loose women so when she was sexually abused she suffered from GUILT DEPRESSION an SELF JUDGEMENT PTSD. What did this mother do to deserve sexual abuse? Do you feel this is wrong? Did they have camera to protect the women in prison? Whose to blame? .......................................Well this could be anyone's parent friend lover or wife or sister.....This is an example.. of what happens when women incarcerated have their rights taken away...The Sate is supposed to provide safe prison. This was a made up example as far as I know didn't happen to anyone I know.. but could it happen to you?

How We Built Our HIV Crime Data Set

by Sergio Hernandez, Special to ProPublica

For our investigation into state laws that criminalize exposing others to HIV [1], we sifted through millions of law-enforcement records compiled from state court data, police reports and offender registries in 19 states. About 1,440 records, dating back as far as 1994, involved HIV laws.
We aimed to catalog as many cases involving HIV-specific laws as possible over the past 10 years.  While our dataset represents one of the largest indexes of such cases ever assembled, the national tally is surely higher, because data from some of the 19 states was incomplete, and at least 35 states have laws that specifically criminalize exposing another person to HIV.

How We Collected the Data

We started with approximately 200 records identified by the Sero Project [2], an HIV/AIDS advocacy group that campaigns against what it calls “HIV criminalization.” The Sero Project submitted public records requests to county prosecutors’ offices in states with HIV-specific criminal laws, requesting information about their cases. In some instances, prosecutors provided detailed information about their cases, including names, case numbers and outcome (conviction, acquittal, dismissal, etc.). Other times, they provided just an aggregate tally of HIV cases from their counties. Often, prosecutors were unable to provide any information about their HIV cases because they could not identify files by specific statute or offense.
When key information was missing from the Sero Project’s records, ProPublica followed up with the prosecutors’ offices to gather additional information. For 131 records across 28 counties, our requests for follow-up data went unanswered.
ProPublica independently obtained statewide data from state courts, corrections departments and other law enforcement agencies. A complete list of raw data sources is here [3].
For 180 records, we were able to determine the arresting agency. We contacted those police and sheriff’s departments to gather narrative reports and fill in missing data, such as offense date; suspects’ and victims’ names, ages, sexes, races, ethnicities and the method of alleged HIV exposure.
Out of our 180 requests for narrative reports, we obtained 81 reports, although many were heavily redacted. In some cases, agencies withheld records entirely. For example, in Boone County, Mo., officials would not provide records about a case because doing so would disclose the suspect’s HIV status and violate state privacy laws, they said. We received 23 denials and 76 of our requests for narrative reports went unanswered.
Altogether, we assembled a database of more than 1,400 records from 19 states in which accusations of HIV-specific crimes were made since 1994. For our story, we chose to focus on cases from the last 10 years.

Cleaning the Data

Where we were able, we identified and removed duplicate records by matching and comparing names, dates of birth, case numbers and unique identifiers assigned to individual cases or people by the original data source (for example, inmate number).
We also looked for and removed misclassified records, such as instances where the police report didn’t mention HIV but the prosecutor’s records showed a charge under an HIV statute, or where the data did not contain enough information about the offense or corresponding statute to confirm that it was HIV-related. For example, an offense coded “Ohio Rev. Code § 2903.11” would not be enough information to tell us whether the defendant was accused of causing “physical harm to another or to another’s unborn by means of a deadly weapon” (ORC § 2903.11(A)(2)) or having sex without disclosing their HIV infection (ORC § 2903.11(B)(1)).
We also added fields to group cases by alleged method of HIV exposure (for example, sexual contact, needle-sharing, spitting or biting) and final disposition (such as acquittal, conviction, dismissal or unknown).
Method of HIV exposure was determined using descriptions in primary sources (such as court documents or police reports) or the statute the defendant was accused of violating. In some states, certain statutes or their subsections correspond to specific behaviors (such as Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-109, where subsection 1 criminalizes “intimate contact with another,” while subsection 2 criminalizes the transfer or donation of “potentially infectious bodily fluid” and prostitution while HIV-positive exists as a separate section altogether: TCA § 39-13-516.)
In states where the laws are not specific about method of exposure (such as Mississippi, where Miss. Code Ann. § 97-27-14(1) criminalizes “exposure to human immunodeficiency virus” and does not distinguish among sex, needle-sharing, prostitution and blood or organ donation), method of HIV exposure was logged as “Unknown.”
Where we had enough information to do so, we grouped cases involving sexual contact, prostitution and sexual assault separately. We did the same with cases that involved spitting, biting, scratching or throwing bodily fluids, as well as similar cases where the victim was a peace officer.
For our analysis, we entered this data into a Microsoft Excel table and removed records dated before Jan. 1, 2003. This returned a total of 1,352 records.

Findings

Of the 1,352 records identified since 2003, we identified at least 541 convictions or guilty pleas pertaining to HIV-related charges. These cases involved at least 428 individual people. The remaining conviction records may include some repeat offenders or duplicate records that we were unable to identify because of missing data.
We found 179 records of unprosecuted arrests, acquittals, and dismissals; 31 records of pending cases and 601 records in which the final disposition was unknown. Of these 811 records, we were able to isolate 265 individual people who appeared in 461 records. Twenty-eight of these individuals were also represented in the list of convictions, meaning they were convicted for at least one HIV-related crime, but were also acquitted on other HIV charges or had charges that were dismissed, pending or for which the outcome was unknown. The remaining 350 records did not include enough data to sift out repeat offenders or duplicate records to come up with a tally of unique defendants.

Conviction	Acquittal	Dismissal	Pending	Unknown	Total
541	8	171	31	601	1,352

Of the 541 convictions, defendants’ sex data was available for 467 records. Men were the offenders in three-fourths of these records (n=352), while women made up a quarter of them (n=115).
Race data was available for 322 records. Offenders were reported as black or African American in nearly two-thirds of the records (n=186), while whites made up the rest of the records (n=136).

	Black	White	Unknown	Total
Female	38	44	33	115
Male	148	92	112	352
Unknown			74	74
Total	186	136	219	541

Method of alleged HIV exposure was available for 194 records. Almost all of these cases — 94 percent — involved sexual exposure (n=182). Six of these involved sexual assault, 58 involved prostitution or soliciting a prostitute and 118 involved sexual or “intimate” contact, which could also have included sexual assaults and prostitution cases.

Other (Biting, spitting or throwing bodily fluids)	Parenteral (Blood, organ, tissue or semen donation)	Sexual or “intimate” contact	Sexual assault	Prostitution or soliciting a prostitute	Unknown	Total
9	3	118	6	58	347	541

We found the largest number of records of convictions in Georgia (n=120), followed by Florida (n=99), Missouri (n=68) and Ohio (n=59). The largest number of records of convictions we found occurred in 2004 (n=91), followed by 2009 (n=57), 2008 (n=56), and 2005 (n=55). We found 52 records of convictions in 2012 and in 2013 so far, although 2013 data may be incomplete as cases may have been adjudicated while we collected our data.

Limitations

Because of the incomplete data collection, and because different data sources captured cases at different stages of the criminal justice process (for example, arrest, prosecution or conviction), the overall group does not constitute a statistically random selection and should not be used to generalize our findings to a broader population.
Most states exclude sealed and expunged cases, and depending on the jurisdiction, our data may also be missing information about:

Cases in which people were not arrested or charged

Cases that local agencies did not report to state agencies

Cases that were misreported to state agencies

Offenders’ criminal histories

Concurrent offenses

Whether measures were taken to prevent HIV exposure or transmission

In a few instances, we learned of cases through secondary sources, such as news accounts, and were able to obtain case information that we would not have been able to obtain otherwise. For example, if a local agency did not report cases to its state, a news account may have provided information about a case in that jurisdiction, allowing us to obtain legal records. In all cases, our data is based on primary law enforcement records.

Download the Data

The data we used in this story is available for download. Using our data means you agree to our Terms of Use [4]. Please read them before you proceed.
HIV Crime Data.csv [5] (238 KB)
About the HIV Criminalization Data [6]
Some personally identifiable information (e.g., names) has been omitted from this data. We have included some values — such as case numbers, the original data sources’ proprietary identifiers, offense dates, birth dates and jurisdictional information — to help you locate individual cases if necessary.
If you have questions or need more information, email data@propublica.org [7].

#CODEPENDENCY

Healthy Limits

Boundaries are vital to recovery. Having and setting healthy limits' is connected to all phases of recovery: growing in self esteem, dealing with feelings, and learning to really love and value ourselves.

Boundaries emerge from deep within. They are connected to letting go of guilt and shame, and to changing our beliefs about what we deserve. As our thinking about this becomes dearer, so will our boundaries.

Boundaries are also connected to a Higher Timing than our own. We'll set a limit when we're ready, and not a moment before. So will others.

There's something magical about reaching that point of becoming ready to set a limit. We know we mean what we say; others take us seriously too. Things change, not because we're controlling others, but because we've changed.

Today, I will trust that I will learn, grow, and set the limits I need in my life at my own pace. This timing need only be right for me.

Women who sleep with bisexual partners are rising number of new #HIV cases.

Women who sleep with bisexual partners are rising number of new #HIV cases.
By Carl Campanile
Women who had unprotected sex with bisexual partners accounted for most of the new female HIV cases in the city last year, according to a new Health Department study.
Of the 647 women diagnosed with HIV in 2012, more than three of  four — 480 —  had sex with infected men, the study said.
During the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, many women contracted HIV from having sex with men who carried the deadly virus from drug use, particularly sharing needles that had contaminated blood. Or the women abused drugs themselves..
But in recent years, the transmission HIV — the immune system-destroying virus that can lead to full-blown AIDS — related to drug use has plunged as a factor in newly reported cases.
That means women are contracting HIV from men who’ve had sex with other men, officials aid.
“Men who engage in sex both with men and women can acquire HIV from a male partner and then transmit the virus to female partners,” the Centers for Disease Control said.
In one HIV study, one in three black men, one in four Hispanic men and one in seven white men reported having unprotected sex with women as well as men.
“However,” the CDC said, “these women may not have known of their male partners’ sexual activity.”
Black women accounted for two-thirds of the 647 new HIV cases. Hispanics accounted for 27 percent and whites, 7 percent.
“In 2012, the HIV diagnosis rate among black females was over three times the rate among Hispanic females and over 12 times higher than the rate among white females,” the Health Department analysis said.
Locally and nationally, black residents — both male and female — suffer the highest rates of HIV/AIDS. Health officials say both HIV and bisexual and gay sex remain taboo topics in the black community.
“Stigma, fear, discrimination, homophobia, and negative perceptions about HIV testing can also place too many African Americans at higher risk. Many at risk for infection fear stigma more than infection and may choose instead to hide their high-risk behavior rather than seek counseling and testing,” the CDC said.
Both city and federal officials have promoted condom use and HIV testing to reduce the spread of the sexually transmitted disease.
The study found that 1,578 people died from AIDS in the city in 2012, down from 1,690 in 2011.
Men still account for eight in 10 of the new cases, mostly transmitted through unprotected gay sex.
In total, there were 3,141 new cases of HIV and 1,889 full-blown AIDS cases, down from 3,404 HIV and 2,208 AIDS in 2011. The number of HIV cases dropped more than 25 percent since 2008.
There are 114,926 people believed to be living here with HIV/AIDS – up from 113,319.