An estimated 11,940 state and federal prisoners were known to be living with HIV at the end of 2020, a decline of nearly 16 percent from the previous year, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics says in a new report. The decline reflects a 15 percent drop decline in the overall state and federal prison population over the same time period. The rate of those with HIV remained at 1,153 per 100,000 persons in state and federal prisons from 2019 to 2020. State and federal prisons held 2,250 fewer persons living with HIV in 2020 than in 2019, marking the twenty-second consecutive year of decline and the largest one-year decrease, BJS said.
Since peaking in 1998, the number of state and federal prisoners living with HIV declined each year through 2020, largely due to a four percent average annual decrease in state prisoners with HIV. State prisons reported 17 AIDS-related deaths in 2019, the lowest number since data collection began in 1991. A total of 8,065 state prisoners died of AIDS-related causes across the 29-year period 1991 to 2019, three fourths of whom died between 1991 and 2009. Between 2016 and 2019, 74 Black, 31 white, and nine Hispanic persons in state and federal prison died of AIDS-related illnesses.