What Role Should Criminal Justice Play in the Fight against STIs?

In this editorial from the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections, an official journal of the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV (BASHH) and the Australasian Chapter of Sexual Health Medicine (AChSHM),  the author, David Gurnham asks: "Can criminal justice make a positive contribution to the way states respond to sexually transmitted infections (STIs)? In many countries, the passing on of infections through unsafe sexual activity is criminalized, either through specific legislation, or by adapting general prohibitions against inflicting bodily harm. If particular STIs (such as HIV) are harms to be taken at least as seriously as a broken leg then it makes sense to a criminal lawyer to treat both its intentional and ‘reckless’ transmission as a criminal offence.  It comes, therefore, as something of a surprise to some lawyers that so much of the reaction amongst healthcare practitioners and public health policy-makers to criminalisation has been fiercely negative. It is beyond argument that criminal justice and public health have very different aims and admit of different measures of success, authority and proof. Whether these differences are so great as to be unbridgeable remains to be seen.

A fundamental point over which criminal justice and healthcare professionals disagree is whether punishing non-intentional transmission is ever right in principle..."