The Nation - News from Sept. 19, 1989

Blood tests of prison and jail inmates across the country show that about one in 24 is infected with the AIDS virus, fewer than expected, researchers said. The study is the first to try to estimate the prevalence of AIDS in prisoners, said its principal author, Dr. Ford Brewer of the Johns Hopkins University School of Hygiene and Public Health in Baltimore. The 11,198 inmates in the study came from 10 prisons and jails. Of the inmates tested, 476, or 4.25%, were infected with AIDS, Brewer said at a meeting of the American Society for Microbiology in Houston, where he presented his results. Brewer found the highest rates of infection, up to 8%, in the mid-Atlantic states. As few as 2.7% of the inmates were infected in one jail on the West Coast. The figures at all the institutions were lower than expected, Brewer said. “Most of these prisons and jails thought it was going to be four or five times as high,” he said.