The Legislature finds and declares all of the following:
(a) The public peace, health, and safety is endangered by the spread of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), and hepatitis B and C within state and local correctional institutions.
(b) The spread of AIDS and hepatitis B and C within prison and jail populations presents a grave danger to inmates within those populations, law enforcement personnel, and other persons in contact with a prisoner infected with the HIV virus as well as hepatitis B and C, both during and after the prisoner’s confinement. Law enforcement personnel and prisoners are particularly vulnerable to this danger, due to the high number of assaults, violent acts, and transmissions of bodily fluids that occur within correctional institutions.
(c) HIV, as well as hepatitis B and C, have the potential of spreading more rapidly within the closed society of correctional institutions than outside these institutions. These major public health problems are compounded by the further potential of the rapid spread of communicable disease outside correctional institutions through contacts of an infected prisoner who is not treated and monitored upon his or her release, or by law enforcement employees who are unknowingly infected.
(d) New diseases of epidemic proportions such as AIDS may suddenly and tragically infect large numbers of people. This title primarily addresses a current problem of this nature, the spread of HIV, as well as hepatitis B and C, among those in correctional institutions and among the people of California.
(e) HIV, AIDS, and hepatitis B and C pose a major threat to the public health and safety of those governmental employees and others whose responsibilities bring them into direct contact with persons afflicted with those illnesses, and the protection of the health and safety of these personnel is of equal importance to the people of the State of California as the protection of the health of those afflicted with the diseases who are held in custodial situations.
(f) Testing described in this title of individuals housed within state and local correctional facilities for evidence of infection by HIV and hepatitis B and C would help to provide a level of information necessary for effective disease control within these institutions and would help to preserve the health of public employees, inmates, and persons in custody, as well as that of the public at large. This testing is not intended to be, and shall not be construed as, a prototypical method of disease control for the public at large.
(Amended by Stats. 2006, Ch. 800, Sec. 1. Effective January 1, 2007.)