Laws passed during the early stages of the HIV epidemic targeted people with HIV before researchers fully understood transmission and prevention of the disease. These laws now serve as vestiges of fear and misinformation about HIV transmission. These laws also perpetuate systems of inequality by enabling bias and misinformation to permeate the courts. As such, new approaches to HIV transmission should move from a punitive model and more toward a proactive transformative model. This article proposes a multi-pronged approach to destigmatize and decriminalize HIV involving community, legislative, and educational structural changes. // (2013)
