People living with HIV and service-providers in various fields regularly raise concerns about potential criminal liability and about the negative impacts of such criminal prosecutions. There is certainly disagreement among people living with HIV, AIDS organizations and others working in the field about where to draw the lines with respect to the use of the criminal law, and the appropriate strategies that should be pursued in so doing.
This Case study shows how the criminal law has been applied in Canada, where there have been to date a total of 96 prosecutions in which a person living with HIV was alleged to have transmitted HIV or exposed a sexual partner to the risk of infection without disclosing HIV-positive status.
