Canada has been known as a hot spot for HIV criminalization where the act of not disclosing one’s HIV-positive status to sex partners has historically been regarded as a serious criminal offences. Criminalized Lives describes how this approach has disproportionately harmed poor, Black and Indigenous people, gay men, and women in Canada. In this book, people who have been criminally accused of not disclosing their HIV-positive status detail the many complexities of disclosure and the violence that results from being criminalized.

Accompanied by portraits from artist Eric Kostiuk Williams, the profiles examine whether the criminal legal system is really prepared to handle the nuances and ethical dilemmas faced every day by people living with HIV. By offering personal stories of people who have faced criminalization firsthand, Alexander McClelland questions common assumptions about HIV, the role of punishment, and violence that results from the criminal legal system’s legacy of categorizing people as either victims or perpetrators.

Alexander McClelland is a sociolegal researcher and Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa in the Department of Criminology. He is currently examining issues of confidentiality for research with criminalized people. His work focuses on the intersections of life, law, and disease, where he has developed a range of collaborative and interdisciplinary writing, academic, activist, and artistic projects to address issues of criminalization, sexual autonomy, surveillance, drug liberation, and the construction of knowledge on HIV.

Alexander McClelland's profile page

Kostiuk Williams Williams' profile page

Robert Suttle's profile page

"Weaving firsthand accounts and meaningful research, McClelland goes beyond state laws and click-bait headlines to underscore the human impact of criminalization."

POZ

"Criminalized Lives is not merely a searing condemnation of how HIV laws ruin lives and remove people living with HIV from the 'public' in 'public health'; the book asks deep and urgent questions about how journalists, criminologists, and scholars are complicit in making vulnerable people’s lives become mediated by violence."

author of The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide

"Criminalized Lives is a clearly written account of the impacts of HIV criminalization in Canada, the reasons it should end, and the work happening to end it. The book exposes how public health frameworks are used to implement state violence on targeted populations and makes a convincing case against limited reforms that carve out some populations for reduced criminalization while leaving others in the crosshairs of police and courts. It is a wonderful contribution to conversations about criminalization, health, HIV, and racial and gender justice."

author of Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next)

"Powerful and important. . . . The book's moving interviews illustrate that criminal legal systems are unprepared to handle the nuances and ethical dilemmas faced everyday by people living with HIV."

HIV Justice Network

"Eye-opening. . . . An unforgettable chronicle."

Literary Review of Canada