Building Connections Between HIV Criminalization and Intimate Partner Violence Advocacy at Louisiana State University
CHLP and Louisiana Coalition on Criminalization and Health convene advocates in Baton Rouge to explore survivor-centered, non-carceral approaches to safety and accountability
On October 23, CHLP partnered with the Louisiana Coalition on Criminalization and Health (LCCH) to convene an HIV Criminalization and Intimate Partner Violence Roundtable at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge. Hosted in cooperation with LSU’s Tiger Prison Project, the gathering brought together more than 25 advocates, legal professionals, public health practitioners, researchers, and community leaders from Louisiana and beyond to explore the intersections of intimate partner violence (IPV) and HIV criminalization and build stronger connections between two areas of advocacy that are too often positioned in opposition to one another.
Efforts to expand HIV and other health-based criminalization laws are frequently justified as necessary to protect people who have experienced IPV. These arguments often assume that survivors want punitive legal responses, while overlooking the ways criminalization can reinforce stigma, undermine bodily autonomy, and expose survivors to further harm. For people living with HIV who are experiencing abuse, HIV criminalization laws can become another tool of coercion, enabling partners to threaten them with prosecution or use their health status to maintain control.
The roundtable grew out of the need to challenge these narratives and deepen advocates' understanding of how HIV criminalization and IPV intersect. In opening remarks, CHLP Senior Positive Justice Project Attorney Jada Hicks pointed to recent advocacy in Louisiana, where legislation introduced in 2025 sought to expand criminal penalties for exposure to sexually transmitted infections. Although the bill was framed as a measure to protect survivors of IPV and sexual assault, advocates with LCCH challenged the assumption that expanding criminalization would create safety. LCCH Director Dietz explained how their efforts helped shift the legislative conversation toward examining Louisiana's existing HIV criminal laws and their consequences.
The Louisiana experience underscored a central question guiding the roundtable: How can advocates support survivors, demand accountability, and respond to harm without expanding systems of punishment that can further endanger the very people they are intended to protect?
“Louisiana's history with HIV exposure laws makes one thing clear: we cannot confuse criminalization with protection,” said Sonya Milliman of LCCH. “Attending the IPV/HIV Criminalization Roundtable reinforced the importance of rejecting the false choice between survivor safety and HIV justice. We should never have to criminalize one person to protect another.”
Throughout the gathering, participants explored approaches to IPV that center the experiences, needs, and autonomy of people directly affected by violence. Jada and CHLP Public Health and Advocacy Strategist Kytara Epps presented on the harms of HIV criminalization and how those harms add to and mirror the harms of stigma of IPV. Dietz and Law for Black Lives’ Morgan Wilson guided a discussion that examined how community-based responses, services, and non-carceral strategies can create meaningful opportunities for healing, accountability, and safety without defaulting to the criminal legal system. Participants also considered how advocates can address the needs of survivors while recognizing the complex relationships and circumstances in which violence occurs.
The roundtable marked an important step toward building shared language and strategies across the HIV criminalization and IPV advocacy movements. Participants began laying the groundwork for a best-practices resource informed by the expertise of people working in both fields, with a focus on countering harmful narratives, strengthening collaboration, and advancing approaches that recognize survivors and people living with HIV as communities whose needs and struggles are not mutually exclusive.
Also in attendance was CHLP Executive Director S. Mandisa Moore-O’Neal, who observed that the convening drove home the need to host more of these conversations as CHLP sharpens our analysis on the issue. By creating space for dialogue across movements, CHLP and its partners are working to advance a shared understanding that supporting survivors and opposing HIV criminalization are not competing goals. Both require approaches rooted in dignity, bodily autonomy, meaningful accountability, and community-defined safety.
