AIDS and Criminal Justice

This article reviews scholarship at the intersection of anthropology, criminal justice, and AIDS. Street ethnography is presented in a political and historical context, focusing on the distinctive ways that anthropologists have contributed to discussions of illegal drug and sex markets in poor urban neighborhoods. The review also considers subjects that may be explored by anthropologists in the future, including imprisonment as an institutional HIV risk factor that intensifies individual behavioral risk and the criminalization of intentional HIV transmission. This research area raises critical questions about how culture and law shape viral risk.