Published May, 2015
Guiding Principles for Eliminating Disease-Specific Criminal Laws, Positive Justice Project Steering Committee (2015)
The Positive Justice Project (PJP), a national coalition challenging HIV criminal law policies in the United States, released this set of principles to guide the reform of state HIV criminal laws across the country.
The Guiding Principles for Eliminating Disease-specific Criminal Laws call for the reform of existing laws that exclude HIV and other infectious diseases from long-established interpretations of criminal felony laws requiring proof of intent to harm accompanied by conduct likely to cause death or severe injury for a conviction. Most states require only evidence that a person has been diagnosed with HIV and has engaged in some form of contact with a third party for a felony conviction and, in some cases, life-long sex offender registration.
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