Condoms in prisons...

[crack baby]

There's a fuss over a bill in the California legislature that would
require prisons to distribute condoms to inmates in an attempt to
prevent the spread of HIV. Proponents claim that preventing HIV is
important while opponents say that simply enforcing the existing
regulation prohibiting sex between prisoners would solve the problem.

My question is why HIV+ or other infectious people are placed among
the general prison population. Nevada routinely tests everyone
entering the prison system and segregates those with HIV, but here
in enlightened California that would be considered a violation of
their precious civil rights.

I think it's ridiculous that there is no mandatory testing and
segregation, and everyone else's rights are violated to accomodate
the privacy concerns of a minority group that really should have no
such privilege because they are in prison. Supposing I was sentenced
to even a few months for some minor crime, that turns into an almost
certain death sentence as I am gang-raped by Tyrone and his homies.

Does the state enjoy sovereign immunity in this case? If their
failure to ensure a sanitary prison environment causes me to
contract a deadly disease, can I sue them for either monetary
damages and/or cruel & unusual punishment?

[Bill Z.]

Post by crack baby
My question is why HIV+ or other infectious people are placed among
the general prison population. Nevada routinely tests everyone
entering the prison system and segregates those with HIV, but here
in enlightened California that would be considered a violation of
their precious civil rights.

Nonsense - it is not "their precious civil rights" but an overcrowded
prison system (due in part to the "three strikes" law California has,
which lengthens some prison terms considerably). To see why, you need
to read up an arcane branch of mathematics called queueing theory.

If you segregate the prisoners based on some criteria or other, then
you have have to reserve seperate areas or maybe separate prisons for
each class, and you end up using your resources (e.g., jail cells)
less efficiently. You'll have to read up on the mathematics to see
why, and you'll find that it applies equally well to the allocation of
prison cells, lines of customers waiting for a teller at a bank, usage
of computer memory, and a host of other areas.

So basically, overcrowding is the real reason - it is a critically
serious problem and segregating prisoners would make it even worse,
so you need a very good reason before you can segregate people.
Apparently the powers that be have decided that HIV status is not
a sufficiently compelling reason.

[crack baby]

Bill Z. wrote...

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
My question is why HIV+ or other infectious people are placed among
the general prison population. Nevada routinely tests everyone
entering the prison system and segregates those with HIV, but here
in enlightened California that would be considered a violation of
their precious civil rights.

Nonsense - it is not "their precious civil rights" but an overcrowded
prison system (due in part to the "three strikes" law California has,
which lengthens some prison terms considerably). To see why, you need
to read up an arcane branch of mathematics called queueing theory.
If you segregate the prisoners based on some criteria or other, then
you have have to reserve seperate areas or maybe separate prisons for
each class, and you end up using your resources (e.g., jail cells)
less efficiently. You'll have to read up on the mathematics to see
why, and you'll find that it applies equally well to the allocation of
prison cells, lines of customers waiting for a teller at a bank, usage
of computer memory, and a host of other areas.

So using resources most efficiently is more important than keeping the
captive prison population from contracting a deadly contagious disease
that costs a million dollars a year to treat? Assuming a prison full
of prisoners all serving 20-year term, if you start with even a single
HIV+ prisoner, you pretty much guarantee that ALL of them will be HIV+
by the end of the 20 years.

I see no solution other than segregation. The ban on sex is completely
unenforcable, the expectation than violent, sociopathic criminals will
have enough self-control to use condoms is ludicrous, as is the
expectation that victims of gang-rapes will be able to persuade their
rapists to use condoms.

BTW, who pays for the medical care of AIDS-infected prisoners? I'm
betting the feds pay for it, so state prison systems really don't care
how many of their prisoners get infected. Cut off the federal
funding immediately and force the state prison systems to either stop
the spread of HIV or pay for it.

[Bill Z.]

Post by crack baby
Bill Z. wrote...

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
My question is why HIV+ or other infectious people are placed among
the general prison population. Nevada routinely tests everyone
entering the prison system and segregates those with HIV, but here
in enlightened California that would be considered a violation of
their precious civil rights.

Nonsense - it is not "their precious civil rights" but an overcrowded
prison system (due in part to the "three strikes" law California has,
which lengthens some prison terms considerably). To see why, you need
to read up an arcane branch of mathematics called queueing theory.
If you segregate the prisoners based on some criteria or other, then
you have have to reserve seperate areas or maybe separate prisons for
each class, and you end up using your resources (e.g., jail cells)
less efficiently. You'll have to read up on the mathematics to see
why, and you'll find that it applies equally well to the allocation of
prison cells, lines of customers waiting for a teller at a bank, usage
of computer memory, and a host of other areas.

So using resources most efficiently is more important than keeping the
captive prison population from contracting a deadly contagious disease
that costs a million dollars a year to treat?

I'm merely describing reality to you. Read up on queueing theory to
see why. As I said, it's expensive to partition inmates into various
classes and keep them in separate areas based on that. You have all
sorts of issue to worry about - gangs that don't get along, etc. With
a fixed budget, you can't do everything, so someone has to set
priorities and do the best they can.

Post by crack baby
Assuming a prison full of prisoners all serving 20-year term, if you
start with even a single HIV+ prisoner, you pretty much guarantee
that ALL of them will be HIV+ by the end of the 20 years.

Not true - you are assuming your single HIV+ prisoner is going to
engage in sexual activity with other inmates. Maybe he doesn't like
doing that and got sick due to drug use (infected needles).

Post by crack baby
I see no solution other than segregation.

Would you be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional spare
cells you'll need?

Well you can come up with the $$$ or we can do the sensible thing and
reform the three-strikes law to let people out when they are obviously
not a threat to society anymore (you seemed to have completely missed
that part of my post). I mean, some 75 year old guy who needs a
walker to get around and whose third strike at the age of 33 was a
strong-arm robbery is not likely to go back to his former criminal
career if released. So obviously the three-strikes law needs some
tuning.

[crack baby]

Bill Z. wrote...

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
Assuming a prison full of prisoners all serving 20-year term, if you
start with even a single HIV+ prisoner, you pretty much guarantee
that ALL of them will be HIV+ by the end of the 20 years.

Not true - you are assuming your single HIV+ prisoner is going to
engage in sexual activity with other inmates. Maybe he doesn't like
doing that and got sick due to drug use (infected needles).

Yes, I am assuming that. Since a single HIV+ individual in the outside
world can easily infect thousands of people a year, I can only assume
that the situation among a captive prison population is much worse. It
might be possible for someone to survive a 20-year sentence without
getting infected, but it seems unlikely. Oh, and just like sex, heroin
use is also banned in prison, and of course nothing prevents an inmate
from shooting up and sharing his needles.

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
I see no solution other than segregation.

Would you be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional spare
cells you'll need?

Will people be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional billions
of dollars needed to pay for prisoners' AIDS treatment? And I still
would like to know who pays for their HIV treatment - if the feds are
paying for it (under Ryan White), then state prisons have no incentive
to prevent new infections. If the state prison system had to pay for
their medical treatment, you can be sure that screening and segregation
would be implemented immediately in spite of the left's protests.

Post by Bill Z.
Well you can come up with the $$$ or we can do the sensible thing and
reform the three-strikes law to let people out when they are obviously
not a threat to society anymore (you seemed to have completely missed
that part of my post). I mean, some 75 year old guy who needs a
walker to get around and whose third strike at the age of 33 was a
strong-arm robbery is not likely to go back to his former criminal
career if released. So obviously the three-strikes law needs some
tuning.

The three-strikes law is irrelevant. Whether you are a vicious serial
rapist or a white collar criminal caught embezzling, even a few days in
an unsegregated prison means you are likely to catch HIV. Since the
penalty for embezzlement or even serial rape is not death, incarceration
in an unsegregated facility is cruel & unusual punishment.

[Bill Z.]

Post by crack baby
Bill Z. wrote...

[note how "crack baby" snipped the technical explanation regarding
resource allocation - he obviously knows he can't address the real
issues, so he now wants to rant about things he made up].

Post by crack baby

Post by Bill Z.
Not true - you are assuming your single HIV+ prisoner is going to
engage in sexual activity with other inmates. Maybe he doesn't like
doing that and got sick due to drug use (infected needles).

Yes, I am assuming that.

Prove that your assumption is valid. You know, like provide some
statistics from an official government source.

Post by crack baby
Since a single HIV+ individual in the outside world can easily
infect thousands of people a year, I can only assume that the
situation among a captive prison population is much worse.

You got the biology wrong. To infect 1000 people a year, an HIV+
individual would have to engage in the highest-risk type of sex,
completing said sex act in about 5 minutes, and would have to do that
24 hours a day 7 days per week. He'd need a staff of people to keep a
queue of prospective partners available because he wouldn't be able to
afford even a minute of down time. You'd have to feed him
intravenously because he wouldn't have time to eat. I.e., your
assumptions are idiotic - they have nothing to do with the real world.

If you want to be taken even slightly seriously, at least try to get
the numbers approximately right.

Post by crack baby

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
I see no solution other than segregation.

Would you be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional spare
cells you'll need?

Will people be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional billions
of dollars needed to pay for prisoners' AIDS treatment?

As I said, are you willing to raise taxes to pay for it (or cut other
programs)? If you raise the prison system's budget, you have to cut
something else to keep a balanced budget. So, how are you going to
juggle the numbers? If you want to change budgeting priorities, I
suggest you talk to your elected representative and convince him/her
that your issue is more important than the issues that large blocks
of voters (or the people who fund his re-election campaign) have.

Post by crack baby
The three-strikes law is irrelevant.

No, it is highly relevant. It contributes to the current
overcrowding. To do what you want, you have to either add more cells
or free up cell space, and we now have cells occupied by geriatric
prisoners serving life sentences for relatively minor offenses (the
last one in a chain of crimes for which they were convicted). If you
can't raise the budget to build more prisons or expand existing ones,
you'll have to let some prisoners out.

[Brian Mailman]

... I.e., your
assumptions are idiotic - they have nothing to do with the real world.

Oh. It's just another Diablo/Death sock--over in mha, we're well
familiar with it. Pay it no attention.

B/

[Bill Z.]

Post by Brian Mailman

... I.e., your
assumptions are idiotic - they have nothing to do with the real world.

Oh. It's just another Diablo/Death sock--over in mha, we're well
familiar with it. Pay it no attention.

Thanks - I'm on another newsgroup that this was cross posted to and
didn't know about the guy.

[Brian Mailman]

Post by Bill Z.

Post by Brian Mailman

... I.e., your
assumptions are idiotic - they have nothing to do with the real world.

Oh. It's just another Diablo/Death sock--over in mha, we're well
familiar with it. Pay it no attention.

Thanks - I'm on another newsgroup that this was cross posted to and
didn't know about the guy.

I thought so; his laundry basket is quite full of his dirty socks--he
changes them quite often.

You're not going to get much sense out of him. I'm afraid.

B/

[crack baby]

Bill Z. wrote...

Post by Bill Z.
You got the biology wrong. To infect 1000 people a year, an HIV+
individual would have to engage in the highest-risk type of sex,
completing said sex act in about 5 minutes, and would have to do that
24 hours a day 7 days per week. He'd need a staff of people to keep a
queue of prospective partners available because he wouldn't be able to
afford even a minute of down time. You'd have to feed him
intravenously because he wouldn't have time to eat. I.e., your
assumptions are idiotic - they have nothing to do with the real world.
If you want to be taken even slightly seriously, at least try to get
the numbers approximately right.

If my numbers were off, it was that they were too conservative.

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
I see no solution other than segregation.

Would you be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional spare
cells you'll need?

Will people be willing to raise taxes to pay for the additional billions
of dollars needed to pay for prisoners' AIDS treatment?

As I said, are you willing to raise taxes to pay for it (or cut other
programs)? If you raise the prison system's budget, you have to cut
something else to keep a balanced budget. So, how are you going to
juggle the numbers? If you want to change budgeting priorities, I
suggest you talk to your elected representative and convince him/her
that your issue is more important than the issues that large blocks
of voters (or the people who fund his re-election campaign) have.

Lots of things can be cut, perhaps some money can be siphoned from one
one the fancy $20 trillion commissions headed by Rob Reiner.

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby
The three-strikes law is irrelevant.

No, it is highly relevant. It contributes to the current
overcrowding. To do what you want, you have to either add more cells
or free up cell space, and we now have cells occupied by geriatric
prisoners serving life sentences for relatively minor offenses (the
last one in a chain of crimes for which they were convicted). If you
can't raise the budget to build more prisons or expand existing ones,
you'll have to let some prisoners out.

Overcrowding is irrelevant, because even if prisons were restricted
to the most violent criminals, most of those criminals would not
have been sentenced to death and by putting them together with HIV+
prisoners you ensure a death sentence.

[crack baby]

Post by crack baby
Bill Z. wrote...

Post by Bill Z.
You got the biology wrong. To infect 1000 people a year, an HIV+
individual would have to engage in the highest-risk type of sex,
completing said sex act in about 5 minutes, and would have to do that
24 hours a day 7 days per week. He'd need a staff of people to keep a
queue of prospective partners available because he wouldn't be able to
afford even a minute of down time. You'd have to feed him
intravenously because he wouldn't have time to eat. I.e., your
assumptions are idiotic - they have nothing to do with the real world.
If you want to be taken even slightly seriously, at least try to get
the numbers approximately right.

If my numbers were off, it was that they were too conservative.

Sorry to reply to myself, but I just remembered where I got the "thousands"
estimate from. It was from an article from around 1992, before the new
protease inhibitors were available and the existing treatments just being
shown to extend life by several months if aggressive treatment was begun
early enough. So the article described some disco slut puppy who picked
up a dozen or so random strangers at the gay bar EVERY NIGHT for sex, but
it was okay because he made sure to get an HIV test every week so he could
begin treatment as early as possible (and thus ensure several extra
months of partying at the bar). He seemed resigned to catching the virus,
apparently unable to control his penis.

Anyway, 12 * 365 = 4,380, and assuming the virus has a minimum incubation
time of 3 years, that gives us 13,140 new infections before he tests HIV+,
and of course he doesn't care enough to alter his behavior after testing
positive, so that's another 5,000-10,000 new infections before he would
finally succumb to AIDS. Today he wouldn't succumb, the new protease
inhibitors extend "life" for 20 or more years, long enough to infect
87,000 or more. Toss in some crystal meth so he doesn't need to sleep,
and you can easily double the number of infections.

[Bill Z.]

Post by crack baby

Post by crack baby
Bill Z. wrote...

Sorry to reply to myself, but I just remembered where I got the "thousands"
estimate from. It was from an article from around 1992, before the new
protease inhibitors were available and the existing treatments just being
shown to extend life by several months if aggressive treatment was begun
early enough. So the article described some disco slut puppy who picked
up a dozen or so random strangers at the gay bar EVERY NIGHT for sex, but
it was okay because he made sure to get an HIV test every week so he could
begin treatment as early as possible (and thus ensure several extra
months of partying at the bar). He seemed resigned to catching the virus,
apparently unable to control his penis.
Anyway, 12 * 365 = 4,380, and assuming the virus has a minimum incubation
time of 3 years, that gives us 13,140 new infections before he tests HIV+,
and of course he doesn't care enough to alter his behavior after testing
positive, so that's another 5,000-10,000 new infections before he would
finally succumb to AIDS. Today he wouldn't succumb, the new protease
inhibitors extend "life" for 20 or more years, long enough to infect
87,000 or more. Toss in some crystal meth so he doesn't need to sleep,
and you can easily double the number of infections.

As I said, you got the biology wrong. First, the probability of
infecting someone per sex act is under 1 percent, so your 4380 (if
this alleged Lothario could actually do what you claim) amounts to ~44
cases. Second, it does not take 3 years for an infection to be
detectable in a lab test. It is more like 6 months, less for the
really sensitive (and more expensive) tests. Third, crystal meth will
not reduce your need to sleep to zero over a three year period -
you'll simply collapse well before the three years are up.

Oh, and you were talking about prisons originally. Your estimate has
nothing to do with that. They don't provide pickup bars in prison.

This is my last reply - you are obviously an idiot and are just making
things up.

[crack baby]

Post by Bill Z.

Post by crack baby

Post by crack baby
Bill Z. wrote...

Sorry to reply to myself, but I just remembered where I got the "thousands"
estimate from. It was from an article from around 1992, before the new
protease inhibitors were available and the existing treatments just being
shown to extend life by several months if aggressive treatment was begun
early enough. So the article described some disco slut puppy who picked
up a dozen or so random strangers at the gay bar EVERY NIGHT for sex, but
it was okay because he made sure to get an HIV test every week so he could
begin treatment as early as possible (and thus ensure several extra
months of partying at the bar). He seemed resigned to catching the virus,
apparently unable to control his penis.
Anyway, 12 * 365 = 4,380, and assuming the virus has a minimum incubation
time of 3 years, that gives us 13,140 new infections before he tests HIV+,
and of course he doesn't care enough to alter his behavior after testing
positive, so that's another 5,000-10,000 new infections before he would
finally succumb to AIDS. Today he wouldn't succumb, the new protease
inhibitors extend "life" for 20 or more years, long enough to infect
87,000 or more. Toss in some crystal meth so he doesn't need to sleep,
and you can easily double the number of infections.

As I said, you got the biology wrong. First, the probability of
infecting someone per sex act is under 1 percent, so your 4380 (if
this alleged Lothario could actually do what you claim) amounts to ~44
cases. Second, it does not take 3 years for an infection to be
detectable in a lab test. It is more like 6 months, less for the
really sensitive (and more expensive) tests. Third, crystal meth will
not reduce your need to sleep to zero over a three year period -
you'll simply collapse well before the three years are up.

If it's so difficult to transmit, then perhaps we should cut spending
on the disease. Anyway, assuming he "only" infects 44 people per
year - and each one of them infects 44 people per year - a captive
prison population would quickly approach a 100% infection rate in
several years. As for testing, well the California prison seems to
have no intention of performing it, and most gays don't bother to be
tested until symptoms like nasty anal warts appear.

Post by Bill Z.
Oh, and you were talking about prisons originally. Your estimate has
nothing to do with that. They don't provide pickup bars in prison.

The entire prison is a pickup bar. Most gays in the outside world
still have to work a few hours a day, while the prisoners have nothing
else to do except fuck all day and night.

Post by Bill Z.
This is my last reply - you are obviously an idiot and are just making
things up.

I enjoy making numbers up, and I've discovered that my numbers are just
as accurate as the numbers promoted by the AIDS advocates.