Suit Calls Prison Haircutting Unsanitary

AIDS activists supported by South Los Angeles Rep. Maxine Waters announced Monday the filing of a class-action lawsuit asking that federal courts prohibit California prisons from cutting inmates’ hair with unsterilized clippers.

At a news conference in the Crenshaw district, a dozen representatives of various organizations said they believe thousands of prisoners have been exposed to HIV or hepatitis from unsanitary haircutting practices.

A former inmate who is a South Los Angeles minister, James Stern, said he had earlier filed a suit in the matter.

Stern said that while serving time in a state facility in Delano for passing bad checks, he had been placed in solitary confinement for six months for refusing a haircut after observing some other inmates with bleeding scalps after getting haircuts with unsterilized instruments.

Although he finally submitted to getting haircuts, he said he had not contracted either disease, but did come down with a less serious skin condition.

A spokesman for the state’s Corrections Department, Russ Heimerich, said the agency has adopted procedures recommended by the state Bureau of Barbering and Cosmetology that require private barbers to sterilize implements between customers.

Heimerich said, “We don’t believe that the risk of getting AIDS or hepatitis from a haircut in prison is any greater than anywhere else.”

Saying he doubted that Stern would have been subject to solitary confinement for refusing a haircut, the prisons spokesman also said that the fact that the former inmate did not contract either HIV or hepatitis weakens his suit.

“I believe the courts have generally ruled there are only limited instances in which you can sue for a possible risk,” Heimerich said.

Margaret Wilson, a lawyer representing those seeking the class-action injunction, said depositions would be taken to prove there is a danger. Rick Lopes, a spokesman for the Barbering and Cosmetology bureau, said that a state law exempts the prison system from regulations the bureau sets, but that it could choose to follow them.

Waters said a coalition of AIDS organizations became aware of Stern’s suit and decided to back it by filing the class action.

HIV and hepatitis could be transmitted by blood on haircutting instruments, said Paul Simon, a physician with the L.A. County Department of Health Services. He said he had not heard of any such cases in this country.