Police as agents of change: How the police led the movement to criminalize HIV

Do the police just enforce law or do they also help to create it? This chapter explores the role that police played in shaping state HIV-specific criminal statutes in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s. While some legal scholars propose a top-down story of HIV criminalization stoked by federal AIDS initiatives, contemporary archival records reveal a more grassroots story. In several states, police worked-both publicly and privately-to fan the flames of criminalization. They used the media like a megaphone to shape the public narrative: that HIV-positive people were dangerous, that cops were victims, and that change was needed. In some states, they went even further by drafting proposed legislation and lobbying state lawmakers for its passage. In short, police acted very much like social movement actors working to effect legal change. In the chapter's conclusion, I connect these findings to other recent activist and scholarly efforts to reveal the political, social movement-esque characteristics of police in modern society.