Through our own eyes and in our own words: Women, HIV, Criminalization and Prison Exposure

Women living with HIV are over criminalized and overrepresented in Canadian prisons. This is especially true for women living with HIV who also face additional health and social inequities, including poverty, housing instability, racism, and substance use. Criminalization and criminal justice involvement are highly gendered with marginalized populations overrepresented including Indigenous and racialized women, trans and two-spirit individuals and marginalized youth. Through meaningful partnership with women living with HIV, there is an urgent need to collaboratively document the lived experience of criminalization and prison journeys for women living with HIV to gain a better understanding of how to improve continuity of HIV care and prison HIV care provision, including post-release transitions. The proposed community-based research project aims to use participatory qualitative and arts-based research with women living with HIV community, policy and research experts to: 1) gain a better understanding of how the law that criminalizes HIV non-disclosure uniquely shapes the experiences of women living with HIV, including HIV related stigma, access to care, and experiences of violence; 2) characterize the journeys of women living with HIV through the prison system, with the aim of identifying policies and practice that better support women living with HIV during and post incarceration; 3) build community-based research capacity among women living with HIV, HIV service organizations and academic researchers to examine criminalization of HIV and prison health. Women living with HIV will be engaged in all aspects of this project from planning, data collection, writing and dissemination and are represented as co-investigators, collaborators, knowledge users, Peer Research Associates, and interviewers.