From the beginning of the epidemic in the early 1980s, HIV/AIDS has seriously affected correctional inmate populations. The first AIDS cases among inmates were reported in New York State in 1983. As the overall face of the epidemic has changed, with the virus first infecting mostly white homosexuals, to increasing predominance among African American and Hispanic intravenous drug users and their sexual partners, prisons and jails have become epicenters for HIV/AIDS, STDs, tuberculosis, and hepatitis. Nevertheless, the prevalence of HIV among inmates, although disproportionate to rates found in the total U.S. population, has probably declined in recent years.

In 1997, the most recent year for which data are available, there were about 9,200 U.S. prison and jail inmates with AIDS, representing a prevalence rate of 0.5 percent or five times that found...