Prison Discharge Workers Take Tour of City Facilities

Yesterday about 20 inmate discharge workers visited organizations around New York City that provide services to former prison inmates with HIV or AIDS. The touring workers, who process the paperwork to help HIV-infected inmates make the transition to life outside prison, visited the organizations to get to know their support services and the people running them. By so doing, the workers will be able to better tailor plans for their inmate clients' needs, said Irma Rivera, a worker for the AIDS Council of Northeastern New York, which works with inmates in 22 upstate prisons. "It has to be an individual plan," she said. "With a tailored plan, there is a better chance for success."

The discharge workers help the soon-to-be-released inmates by giving them referrals to organizations that can provide housing, substance-abuse counseling and HIV medical treatment. It is important that inmates have vital needs like housing in place, or they tend to get caught up in the search for it and let other things, like medical appointments, slip, said Ruben Rodriguez, another tour organizer and an HIV-positive former inmate. "Adherence goes down the drain," he said. According to Tom Rogers of GlaxoSmithKline, which sponsored the tour, New York has the largest population of HIV- or AIDS-infected patients of any state. Of 70,000 inmates there, as many as 11,000 are infected with HIV, estimates project. Those figures would make New York home to one of every four HIV-infected inmates in the United States.

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