Indian prisons should revive the British colonial practice of allowing conjugal visits to cut down on widespread unprotected sex among male inmates and lower the risk of the spread of AIDS, the author of a study on prison sex said on Thursday.
The study of 1,000 married male prisoners in one jail in Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh state, and another in New Delhi found 82 percent said they had, or had tried to have, sexual relations with another male prisoner whilst in jail.
"It's an open secret. Even officials know about this," said Mridul Srivastava, who teaches criminal law at Lucknow University and wrote the study.
Homosexuality is illegal in India but Srivastava said prison authorities look the other way.
But jail authorities cannot distribute condoms or carry out HIV testing because they fear they would be accused of encouraging homosexual sex.
This increases the possibility of the spread of diseases like HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, he said.
India has the world's heaviest HIV caseload with 5.7 million people living with the illness, according to UN figures.
"We don't know how many convicts are HIV positive because no medical tests for it are carried out," said Srivastava.
"Condoms should be used in jails. If condoms are mentioned, jail authorities don't want to talk about it which is the wrong attitude," he said.
To cut down on prison sex, Srivastava urged a revival of conjugal visits, which he said were common in British-run jails during colonial rule.
"The British knew the sexual urge of prisoners should not be suppressed. They arranged two kinds of meetings for the prisoners: kacchi mulaqat [temporary meeting] and pakki mulaqat [permanent meeting]," he said.
"In the latter, a convict was allowed to spend time with his wife in isolation ... ensuring criminals were in a better frame of mind," he said.
The study found that younger prisoners were usually the object of advances from older convicts.
"Young men between the age of 19 and 26 are soft targets and are generally sodomized," the study stated.
But an official in Lucknow jail has ruled out allowing conjugal visits.
"It's not possible in jail. If we allow meetings between married convicts with their wives in isolation, unmarried prisoners might ask for call girls," senior jail official S.P. Singh said.
"Jails are an institution to reform prisoners, not a brothel," he said.
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