‘Gay Prison’ at Vacaville: Home to AIDS Victims

I’ve seen a lot of my friends die from AIDS. Sometimes it seems like people are dying left and right, all in a pile, just like ants. --An AIDS-stricken inmate

The mood is as blue as the walls in this prison-within-a-prison, where California sends homosexual inmates who are dying from a disease that frightens most people.

Some lay draped like rag dolls on their beds, their skin taut over bones no longer well-padded by flesh and muscle. They stare through the bars of their hospital cells with faces so lifeless they could be stone masks.

Down the hall, the stronger ones mill around stacked metal bunks in a dorm the size of a large living room, puffing cigarettes, adjusting their robes, throwing fake jabs at this and that, talking--but always killing time.

They sound like most inmates. Steven Mednick, a 29-year-old convicted burglar, echoed others as he told a visitor: “It’s severely overcrowded . . . the food’s cold . . . the restroom’s dirty. . . .”

Officials say they do what they can to maintain good conditions.

But the conversation, predictably, soon came around to AIDS as Mednick said bluntly: “I don’t want to die in prison.”

Dr. Nadim Khoury, chief medical officer for the state Corrections Department, said all 28 inmates in the quarantined sections are suffering from AIDS, acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or the condition called pre-AIDS. After diagnosis, they were sent here from prisons throughout California.

The AIDS virus, transmitted through blood or semen, cripples the body’s ability to fight infections or diseases.

Those with pre-AIDS suffer swollen glands, fevers, night sweats, weight loss, fatigue and diarrhea. Twenty per cent develop AIDS within two years.

Aside from the current AIDS-stricken inmates at Vacaville, eight have died in the prison and one died after parole. The fates of five others paroled are unknown.

Nationwide as of last month, AIDS had struck more than 16,545 people and claimed more than 8,360 lives since reporting began in 1981, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta.

Khoury said the inmates at Vacaville picked up the virus from semen during homosexual acts of anal intercourse, from injecting drugs into their bloodstream with a hypodermic needle used by an AIDS carrier or from both activities.

Nearly half of them are homosexuals and about three-quarters are drug users, he said.

Homosexual Drug User

“I’m both a homosexual and a drug user. . . ,” said Keva Smith, a 30-year-old San Franciscan who violated his parole on a grand theft conviction.

Smith, as are many of the others, is confronted with what one prison official calls a “triple whammy”: incarceration, the social stigma of homosexuality and the stigma of a feared fatal disease.

“I’ve seen a lot of my friends die from AIDS. Sometimes it seems like people are dying left and right, all in a pile, just like ants,” said Smith, who coaches some of the other victims in their fight for life.

The 20 guards and nurses who care for the victims say they are not overly afraid of contracting AIDS. Prison workers and inmates are taught that the virus cannot live outside the body or be passed in sweat or saliva by casual contact.

But prison staffers in the AIDS sections face a greater risk than their counterparts policing the general prison population, said a 36-year-old female guard, who could not give her name because of Corrections Department policy.

“An inmate who wanted to infect you, could cut you with a razor or something that had his blood on it,” she said.

Shrugging, she added, “I was scratched recently (while) subduing a violent AIDS victim.”

On the other hand, she pointed out, undetected AIDS cases in the general inmate population are probably infecting others.

And, indeed, one AIDS victim boldly claimed: “I’ve had sex with a million people out there (before being moved to the AIDS dorm). This is Vacaville, the gay prison.”

Guards supervising the general population tease AIDS staff members about being contaminated, even to the point of widely skirting them in the hallway.

Teasing has spread to Lt. Joe McGrath, the prison spokesman who is often quoted and filmed in connection with the AIDS units. But, so far, the stigma has stopped short of becoming ugly, he said.

Victims Feared

Unlike McGrath and the AIDS staff, many inmates in the general prison population do fear the victims and refuse to be housed near them.

Hospital and dorm areas were set aside for victims, McGrath said, after inmates in the general population issued a threat: “If you don’t take care of them, we’ll take care of them.”

Still, even now, no signs mark the special sections. “Inmates know where the areas are,” McGrath said.

AIDS victims in the hospital and dorm, who will be free to go where they wish once they are released from prison, balk little at separation from the general inmate population.

“Being quarantined is saving my life,” one said.

“Who can say what crazies are out there,” another said. “This is prison. It’s like a zoo, anyway.”

Officials plan to set up a single, separate dorm and clinic combination to house up to about 75 AIDS victims, but are waiting until there are at least 40 cases. The overcrowded prison system cannot afford to have scores of beds empty, officials said.

Rate of Increase Slowed

The number of AIDS victims in state prisons has doubled in the last year, according to officials. But the rate of increase since the first case was reported in 1983 has slowed recently, apparently because people have been taking precautions against acquiring the disease.

With more than 50,000 inmates, California has the nation’s largest prison population but has far fewer AIDS-stricken inmates than at least two other states, New Jersey and New York. Officials are not sure why.

Several other states have looked to the California prison system as a model for handling inmates with AIDS, California officials say.

Guidelines, which match those recently handed down by the Centers for Disease Control, call for testing only those who develop symptoms. Inmates have the right to refuse tests, as do individuals on the outside.

Tests are not administered to all inmates because positive results indicate only the presence of AIDS antibodies, not that the person has the virus.

Some health officials say as few as 5% of those testing positive for exposure to AIDS will develop the disease. Some individuals are carriers and can transmit it to others.

Quarantined Until Release

Once diagnosed, inmates are quarantined until release from prison. They retain most privileges, such as TV viewing, that those in the general inmate population enjoy.

Upon release, inmates too sick to care for themselves are supposed to be handed into the care of appropriate social or government agencies.

The inmates feel that they are being unfairly deprived of one possible escape from their plight.

Chuck, a 42-year-old convicted robber, echoed several others in saying he would like the option of taking experimental drugs.

Officials say that is prevented by state and federal law. For one thing, they said, liability for use of anything lacking U.S. Food and Drug Administration approval is too great.