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Epidemiology
Short report
Condoms for prisoners: no evidence that they increase sex in prison, but they increase safe sex
  1. Tony Butler1,
  2. Juliet Richters2,
  3. Lorraine Yap1,
  4. Basil Donovan1,3
  1. 1Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  2. 2School of Public Health and Community Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  3. 3Sydney Sexual Health Centre, Sydney Hospital, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
  1. Correspondence to Professor Tony Butler, The Kirby Institute, UNSW Medicine, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia; tbutler{at}kirby.unsw.edu.au

Abstract

Objectives To determine if the provision of condoms to prisoners in two Australian state prison systems with different policies affects sexual behaviour. In New South Wales’ (NSW) prisons, condoms are freely distributed, while in Queensland prisons none are distributed.

Methods We used a computer-assisted telephone interview to survey randomly selected prisoners in both states about their sexual behaviour in prison.

Results Two thousand and eighteen male prisoners participated. The proportion of prisoners reporting anal sex in prison was equally low in NSW (3.3%) and Queensland (3.6%; p=0.8). A much higher proportion of prisoners who engaged in anal sex in NSW (56.8%) than Queensland (3.1%; p<0.0001) reported they had used a condom if they had had anal sex in prison. Sexual coercion was equally rare in both prison systems.

Conclusions We found no evidence that condom provision to prisoners increased consensual or non-consensual sexual activity in prison. If available, condoms were much more likely to be used during anal sex. Condoms should be made available to prisoners as a basic human right.

  • PRISONERS
  • CONDOMS
  • PREVENTION

This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 3.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

https://doi.org/10.1136/sextrans-2012-050856

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