Findcate

Emma Pinch talks to the writer who wants people to understand that the face of HIV is the one that looks back in the mirror

IT WAS one of those nights, says Cate, which would be stamped on her memory for ever. The kids had sausage and mash for tea, and argued over whose turn it was to help wash up. She put them in the bath they swished the bath foam over the sides and tucked them in bed with a story. She gathered up clothes for the laundry basket, recapped the toothpaste, and laid out damp towels to dry.

And while that thoroughly ordinary domestic scene was being played out, one thought was repeating itself across her mind: Tomorrow I find out if I’m going to die.

Cate Jacobs was 32 and had been working as a volunteer at Liverpool’s Sahir House, providing support to people affected by HIV. There she’d met her partner, Martin, who was HIV positive.

“It was 1994 and there were a lot of myths about how you could contract HIV back then, but I felt pretty clued up in terms of effects and routes of transmission. I was reasonably confident I wouldn’t contract it, as long as we were careful and protected ourselves,” says Cate. “We never took risks.”

Tags: bath foam, cate, clothes, emma, hiv, jacobs, laundry basket, light in the darkness, memory, mind tomorrow, mirror, myths, one of those nights, sahir, sausage and mash, toothpaste, towels, volunteer

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Over the past three decades, California lawmakers and voters have sought to combat crime with an ever-expanding list of sentencing laws, adding years to inmates’ terms and returning parolees to prison more often.

That get tough approach has led to a ballooning prison population with unintended consequences prisons commanding an ever larger share of the state’s budget and unconstitutional conditions for inmates.

The federal courts have found that the prison system’s delivery of health and mental health care, for example, is so negligent that it’s a direct cause of inmate deaths.

The state’s day of reckoning for its years of prison overcrowding is expected to come this week in a federal courtroom in San Francisco.

A special three-judge panel reconvenes Tuesday and is prepared to decide whether crowding has become so bad that inmates cannot receive proper care. If they do, a case rooted in several court challenges dating back more than two decades will move to a second phase.

In that phase, the judicial panel will decide if lowering the inmate population is the only way to fix the problems.

That could result in an order to release tens of thousands of California inmates before their terms are finished, a move Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Republican lawmakers say would endanger public safety.

The state is trying to focus the judges’ attention on the consequences of ordering prisoners freed before they complete their full sentences.

The judges are acting for the first time under the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The act requires the judges to initially find that crowding is the main cause of substandard conditions, a ruling they are likely to make this week.

They then can order inmates released only if they find there are no other options for improving care. The judges hope to complete the second phase of the trial by Christmas.

Tags: arnold schwarzenegger, california inmates, california lawmakers, federal courtroom, improving care, inmate population, judge panel, judicial panel, mental health care, parolees, prison litigation reform act, prison overcrowding, prison population, republican lawmakers, substandard conditions, three decades, unconstitutional conditions, unintended consequences

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