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LAW, POLICY & ETHICS

Public Health, Research, and Law Enforcement:
The Case of HIV/AIDS Prevention

CIRA Law, Policy and Ethics Mini-Conference

Statement of Goals: Public health researchers have accumulated a growing body of evidence indicating that law enforcement practices and policies can have considerable influence on the health of legally marginalized populations, including injection drug users (IDUs), sex workers, and illegal immigrants. As such, they have come to consider policing a part of the context that determines the health risks of these populations, and subsequently to consider the police and policing reasonable sites for public health interventions. Yet, little is known in the field of public health, about the organization of law enforcement, the professional demands on police, the culture of policing, or the place of research in law enforcement. In contrast, in the field of criminology and sociology, researchers have documented much about the criminal justice system, the structure of police practice and culture, and their impact on a range of social outcomes. But they have rarely included public health in their analyses. Therefore, in this meeting, we sought to bring together the expertise represented by these two groups of researchers, as well as police professionals, to strategize about ways to increase the amount and effectiveness of research and interventions aimed at understanding (and possibly modifying) how police and other law enforcers behave towards legally marginalized populations. We focused in particular on HIV related health and behaviors, and on groups particularly vulnerable to HIV (especially IDUs and sex workers).

This conference was co-sponsored by the Center for Interdisciplinary Research on AIDS (CIRA), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and CIRA's Law, Policy and Ethics Core

To learn more about CIRA's Law, Policy and Ethics Core and its mini-conference series, click here.

Goals:
The specific goals of the mini-conference were:

  1. To identify methods for and barriers to investigating the health impact of policing.
  2. To assess the extent to which disease prevention has figured into criminological research on policing.
  3. To determine the interest of law enforcement professionals in health-related issues, including HIV prevention and drug treatment.
  4. To better understand how police currently respond to street-level, health-related problems.
  5. To maximize the benefits of collaboration and research for law enforcement, public health and drug treatment communities.
  6. To develop support from police and other stakeholders for future research collaborations.
CIRA BULLETIN
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YACS@CIRA
Thursday, 10/16
12:30 PM - 1:30 PM

Speaker: Susan M. Kegeles, Ph.D., Co-Director, CAPS

Title: How Can our Research Make a Difference? Issues in Translating an Evidence- based HIV Prevention into Practice

Location: CHIP, 2006 Hillside Rd Unit 1248, Storrs, CT

Video Conference: CIRA, Ste 200, 135 College St
New Haven, CT
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*** SAVE THE DATE ***
Be sure to mark your calendars for the 2009 AIDS Science Day, set for Wed., April 1, 2009, at the Omni New Haven Hotel. Details and registration info. to follow.
CORE SERVICES
CIRA's Core Services are aimed at encouraging the development of new scientists conducting HIV prevention research and enhancing the quality of new and ongoing HIV prevention research at Yale.