Published June, 2017
Karen M. Abram et al., Disparities in HIV/AIDS Risk Behaviors After Youth Leave Detention: A 14-Year Longitudinal Study, 139 Pediatrics 2 (2017)
This study examines HIV/AIDS risk behaviors in delinquent youth during the 14 years after leaving juvenile detention settings, with a focus on gender and racial/ethnic differences. The study, based on 1829 subjects, sought to explain, for example, why Black youth comprise 15% of the population aged 13 to 29, but comprise 39% of incarcerated youth and young adults, and 51.7% of new HIV infections in 2014. Study findings should prompt the pediatric community to address how disproportionate confinement of youth of color contributes to HIV-related health disparities.
Some findings include high prevalence of unprotected vaginal sex (more than two-thirds of males and more than half of females) and sex while drunk or high (almost half of males and more than one quarter of females); and low prevalence of anal sex (8% of males and 3.5% of females, fourteen years after detention), trading sex and drugs (less than 1% or participants in the last two years, but about 7% 5 years after detention), and sharing needles (no males and less than 1% of females).
Notably, the study did not collect data based on sexual orientation, and data for gender was collected on a male/female binary.
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