Sites of Sickness, Sites of Rights? HIV/AIDS and the limits of human rights in British prisons

Abstract

This article considers one specific strand of discussion around HIV/AIDS, in order to think about the uses and limitations of human rights discourse in late twentieth century Britain. HIV/AIDS presented particular problems for prisons, which were initially presented as breeding grounds of infection. This shifted with the rise of human rights language and laws in the 1990s, but talk of rights for prisoners was not as comfortable a fit as talk of equivalence of care. This story is situated in the broader context of attitudes towards crime, HIV/AIDS, and rights in late twentieth century Britain.