Premium
HIV risk behaviour correlates among injecting drug users in Greek prisons
Author(s) -
Koulierakis George,
Gnardellis Charalambos,
Agrafiotis Demosthenes,
Power Kevin G.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
addiction
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.424
H-Index - 193
eISSN - 1360-0443
pISSN - 0965-2140
DOI - 10.1046/j.1360-0443.2000.95812077.x
Subject(s) - prison , imprisonment , medicine , psychiatry , conviction , logistic regression , needle sharing , demography , human immunodeficiency virus (hiv) , psychology , family medicine , criminology , syphilis , sociology , political science , law , condom
Aims. To identify the correlates of injecting drug use within prison. Design. A national cross‐sectional study, participation being voluntary and anonymous. Setting. Ten Greek prisons. Participants. A representative sample of 1000 male inmates; 861 questionnaires were completed and analysed. Measurement. A self‐report questionnaire for demographics, penal history, drug use and sharing injecting equipment. Findings. Two hundred and ninety inmates (33.7%) reported injecting drugs at some time in their lives, of whom 174 (60%) had injected while imprisoned. Among those who had injected while imprisoned, 145 (83%) had shared equipment while incarcerated. Logistic regression analysis suggested that total time in prison, previous drug conviction, being a convict (as opposed to on remand) and having multiple female sexual partners 1 year before incarceration were significant HIV risk behaviour correlates. For every year of imprisonment, the risk of injection in prison increased by about 17% \[OR = 1.17 (95% CI: 1.07‐1.27)]. Inmates with a previous drug‐related conviction were about twice as likely to inject within prison \[OR = 1.97 (95% CI: 1.16‐3.33)]. Finally, convicted inmates were marginally significantly more prone to inject in prison \[OR = 1.58 (95% CI: 0.92‐2.74)]. Conclusions. Variables related to the inmates' prison career influence HIV risk behaviours within prison. There is a need to assist IDUs in reducing the likelihood of high‐risk behaviour by considering factors such as frequency of incarceration, length of time incarcerated and availability of detoxification programmes within prison.