How We Built Our HIV Crime Data Set

For our investigation into state laws that criminalize exposing others to HIV, we sifted through
millions of law-enforcement records compiled from state court data, police
reports and offender registries in 19 states. About 1,440 records, dating back
as far as 1994, involved HIV laws.

We aimed to catalog as many cases involving HIV-specific laws as possible over the past
10 years.  While our dataset represents
one of the largest indexes of such cases ever assembled, the national tally is
surely higher, because data from some of the 19 states was incomplete, and at
least 35 states have laws that specifically criminalize exposing another person
to HIV.

How We Collected the Data

We
started with approximately 200 records identified by the Sero Project, an HIV/AIDS advocacy group that campaigns against what
it calls “HIV criminalization.” The Sero Project
submitted public records requests to county prosecutors’ offices in states with
HIV-specific criminal laws, requesting information about their cases. In some
instances, prosecutors provided detailed information about their cases,
including names, case numbers and outcome (conviction, acquittal, dismissal,
etc.). Other times, they provided just an aggregate tally of HIV cases from
their counties. Often, prosecutors were unable to provide any information about
their HIV cases because they could not identify files by specific statute or
offense.

When key
information was missing from the Sero Project’s
records, ProPublica followed up with the prosecutors’
offices to gather additional information. For 131 records across 28 counties,
our requests for follow-up data went unanswered.

ProPublica independently obtained statewide data from
state courts, corrections departments and other law enforcement agencies. A
complete list of raw data sources is here.

For 180
records, we were able to determine the arresting agency. We contacted those
police and sheriff’s departments to gather narrative reports and fill in
missing data, such as offense date; suspects’ and victims’ names, ages, sexes,
races, ethnicities and the method of alleged HIV exposure.

Out of
our 180 requests for narrative reports, we obtained 81 reports, although many
were heavily redacted. In some cases, agencies withheld records entirely. For
example, in Boone County, Mo., officials would not provide records about a case
because doing so would disclose the suspect’s HIV status and violate state
privacy laws, they said. We received 23 denials and 76 of our requests for
narrative reports went unanswered.

Altogether,
we assembled a database of more than 1,400 records from 19 states in which
accusations of HIV-specific crimes were made since 1994. For our story, we
chose to focus on cases from the last 10 years.

Cleaning the Data

Where we
were able, we identified and removed duplicate records by matching and
comparing names, dates of birth, case numbers and unique identifiers assigned
to individual cases or people by the original data source (for example, inmate
number).

We also
looked for and removed misclassified records, such as instances where the
police report didn’t mention HIV but the prosecutor’s records showed a charge
under an HIV statute, or where the data did not contain enough information
about the offense or corresponding statute to confirm that it was HIV-related.
For example, an offense coded “Ohio Rev. Code § 2903.11” would not be
enough information to tell us whether the defendant was accused of causing
“physical harm to another or to another’s unborn by means of a deadly weapon”
(ORC § 2903.11(A)(2)) or having sex without disclosing their HIV infection (ORC
§ 2903.11(B)(1)).

We also
added fields to group cases by alleged method of HIV exposure (for example,
sexual contact, needle-sharing, spitting or biting) and final disposition (such
as acquittal, conviction, dismissal or unknown).

Method of
HIV exposure was determined using descriptions in primary sources (such as
court documents or police reports) or the statute the defendant was accused of
violating. In some states, certain statutes or their subsections correspond to
specific behaviors (such as Tenn. Code Ann. § 39-13-109, where subsection 1
criminalizes “intimate contact with another,” while subsection 2 criminalizes
the transfer or donation of “potentially infectious bodily fluid” and
prostitution while HIV-positive exists as a separate section altogether: TCA §
39-13-516.)

In states
where the laws are not specific about method of exposure (such as Mississippi,
where Miss. Code Ann. § 97-27-14(1) criminalizes “exposure to human
immunodeficiency virus” and does not distinguish among sex, needle-sharing,
prostitution and blood or organ donation), method of HIV exposure was logged as
“Unknown.”

Where we
had enough information to do so, we grouped cases involving sexual contact,
prostitution and sexual assault separately. We did the same with cases that
involved spitting, biting, scratching or throwing bodily fluids, as well as
similar cases where the victim was a peace officer.

For our
analysis, we entered this data into a Microsoft Excel table and removed records
dated before Jan. 1, 2003. This returned a total of 1,352 records.

Findings

Of the 1,352
records identified since 2003, we identified at least 541 convictions or guilty
pleas pertaining to HIV-related charges. These cases involved at least 428 individual
people. The remaining conviction records may include some repeat offenders or
duplicate records that we were unable to identify because of missing data.

We found
179 records of unprosecuted arrests, acquittals, and dismissals; 31 records of
pending cases and 601 records in which the final disposition was unknown. Of
these 811 records, we were able to isolate 265 individual people who appeared
in 461 records. Twenty-eight of these individuals were also represented in the list
of convictions, meaning they were convicted for at least one HIV-related crime,
but were also acquitted on other HIV charges or had charges that were
dismissed, pending or for which the outcome was unknown. The remaining 350 records
did not include enough data to sift out repeat offenders or duplicate records
to come up with a tally of unique defendants.

Of the
541 convictions, defendants’ sex data was available for 467 records. Men were
the offenders in three-fourths of these records (n=352), while women made up a
quarter of them (n=115).

Race data
was available for 322 records. Offenders were reported as black or African
American in nearly two-thirds of the records (n=186), while whites made up the rest
of the records (n=136).

Method of
alleged HIV exposure was available for 194 records. Almost all of these cases
— 94 percent — involved sexual exposure (n=182). Six of these involved
sexual assault, 58 involved prostitution or soliciting a prostitute and 118
involved sexual or “intimate” contact, which could also have included sexual
assaults and prostitution cases.

We found
the largest number of records of convictions in Georgia (n=120), followed by
Florida (n=99), Missouri (n=68) and Ohio (n=59). The largest number of records
of convictions we found occurred in 2004 (n=91), followed by 2009 (n=57), 2008
(n=56), and 2005 (n=55). We found 52 records of convictions in 2012 and in 2013
so far, although 2013 data may be incomplete as cases may have been adjudicated
while we collected our data.

Limitations

Because
of the incomplete data collection, and because different data sources captured
cases at different stages of the criminal justice process (for example, arrest,
prosecution or conviction), the overall group does not constitute a
statistically random selection and should not be used to generalize our findings
to a broader population.

Most
states exclude sealed and expunged cases, and depending on the jurisdiction, our
data may also be missing information about:

In a few
instances, we learned of cases through secondary sources, such as news
accounts, and were able to obtain case information that we would not have been
able to obtain otherwise. For example, if a local agency did not report cases
to its state, a news account may have provided information about a case in that
jurisdiction, allowing us to obtain legal records. In all cases, our data is
based on primary law enforcement records.

Download the Data

The data
we used in this story is available for download. Using our data means you agree
to our Terms of Use. Please read them before you
proceed.

HIV Crime
Data.csv (238 KB)

About the HIV Criminalization Data

Some
personally identifiable information (e.g., names) has been omitted from this data. We have included some values —
such as case numbers, the original data sources’ proprietary identifiers,
offense dates, birth dates and jurisdictional information — to help you
locate individual cases if necessary.

If you have questions or need more information, email [email protected].