Indiana has six laws that criminalize people living with HIV (PLWH), spanning both the public health and criminal codes. A new report by the Williams Institute at UCLA School of Law evaluates whether these laws reflect current understandings of HIV science and criminalize conduct that poses negligible or no risk of transmitting HIV.
Results show that most of Indiana’s HIV criminal laws have yet to account for decades of advances in HIV science, and none are currently written with enough specificity to prevent criminalizing behaviors that have little to no risk of transmitting HIV.
In Indiana, HIV criminal laws make potential HIV exposure a crime under specific circumstances, such as sexual activity, blood or semen donation, or battery using bodily fluids, such as spitting. All of the laws were enacted between 1988 and 2002 before effective HIV treatment options were widely available and it was established that treating PLWH could prevent the transmission of HIV.
“Scientifically outdated laws work against public health goals regarding HIV testing, prevention, and treatment,” said lead author Nathan Cisneros, HIV Criminalization Project Director at the Williams Institute. “The criminalization of HIV could undermine Indiana’s efforts to end the HIV epidemic and reach the communities most impacted, including people of color, women, and LGBTQ people.”
Key Findings
- None of Indiana’s laws require actual HIV transmission or the intent to transmit HIV. The laws also criminalize conduct that cannot transmit HIV, such as spitting.
- Two laws criminalizing the donation of blood, plasma, or semen penalize conduct that does not transmit HIV. All bodily fluid donations are tested for HIV, and positive units are destroyed.
- Two laws impose enhanced penalties for PLWH who knowingly expose another person to their bodily fluids or waste in an aggressive or malicious manner—conduct that poses no HIV transmission risk. HIV cannot be transmitted externally through contact with body fluids or waste.
- Two laws that criminalize a person’s failure to disclose their HIV status have been partially modernized in recent years to reflect advances in HIV science. They limit criminal conduct to high-risk forms of sexual contact and needle sharing.
- Nevertheless, these laws fail to clarify which sexual activities are considered low or no risk and whether a person who has an undetectable viral load—and therefore cannot transmit HIV through sex—is safe from prosecution.
In recent years, public health and medical experts, including the Indiana State Medical Association, have agreed that to effectively end the HIV epidemic, it is essential to update the state’s HIV criminal laws in line with current scientific understanding of HIV. A key aspect of Indiana’s plan to significantly reduce the number of new transmissions by 2030 involves prioritizing the modernization of these laws.
This report is part of a series by the Williams Institute examining HIV criminalization in Indiana.