NEW YORK — Several times each month, a white bus picks up newly released ex-inmates at New York’s Rikers Island jail complex and drives into Harlem, where helping hands await at a transition program run by a nonprofit called the Fortune Society.
These new arrivals face the myriad challenges confronting anyone leaving jail or prison — and a daunting additional one. They have HIV.
While infection and incarceration represent a double challenge, this can be a health-care opportunity, says JoAnne Page, the Fortune Society’s president. “You don’t want to see people locked up — but if you’re trying to reach people who are HIV-positive, that’s the place to be.”
Each year, according to federal estimates, one out of seven Americans with HIV passes through a correctional facility. Thousands are released every year — transitioning to the uncertainties of the outside world from a regimented environment where, in most cases, HIV medication is provided without charge.