Criminalising Contagion: Legal and Ethical Challenges of Disease Transmission and the criminal law

Should a person that passes on an infection such as HIV/Aids or herpes or causes a child to inherit a genetic disease be treated as a criminal, in the same way as someone that injures another? For many people the criminal law might appear to be an appropriate tool for punishing and deterring such behaviour. But is this recourse to criminalisation really the most appropriate response in this context? The use of criminal law to respond to infectious disease transmission has implications for a number of professional and public organisations. It presupposes, for example, that people who infect others can be identified by the police, prosecuted by the Crown Prosecution Service and effectively and fairly brought to justice in a criminal court applying the law. This process involves a potentially difficult relationship between the organs of criminal justice and public health bodies, whose agendas and priorities may not necessarily coincide.

It is to address these concerns that this Seminar Series bring together researchers, healthcare professionals, diseases charities and practitioners concerned with the creation and enforcement of criminal laws on disease transmission, with a view to producing outputs for dissemination to both academic and non-academic (policy-oriented) beneficiaries. Confirmed participants include: a) international and national academic scholars from criminal law/criminal justice and healthcare law and ethics backgrounds, who will contribute their expertise on the difficulties and limitations of using criminal law in a public health context, b) healthcare professionals and research institutions practising in public and sexual health, c) Nazir Afzal, National Director of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), d) representatives of a number of national charities working with people with infectious diseases, e) media representation from the BBC, f) the Law Commission (criminal law team, represented by Professor David Ormerod). We also aim to involve representatives of the Department of Health.

The aim of the four seminars that comprise this series is to bring together a broad spectrum of expertise to produce research that is at once critical, innovative and informative, and that advances knowledge on law and policy on the topic of criminalising disease. The critical edge is ensured by the combination of eminent as well as more junior academic experts who are invited to present original work on specified questions. In this series, such questions include: a) are criminal sanctions ever the most appropriate response to infection?; is its appropriateness affected by the intimacy of certain relationships (such as ties of love and blood)?; what are the limits of criminalisation? (seminar 1); b) how are notions of risk and moral panic with regard to public health anxieties to be understood? (seminar 2); is there a need to legislate for the criminalisation of disease, and if so on what basis should this proceed? (seminar 3); are the offences currently used to criminalise disease being enforced and prosecuted in the fairest and most appropriate way? (seminar 4).

Being inter-disciplinary as well as inter-professional, the seminars are designed to provide a critical space for these questions to be addressed through paper presentations as well as by debate and discussion involving all participants. We are keen to embrace innovative methods for delivering the objectives of the project by combining a number of stimulating formats for discussion and debate across the four seminars. Our seminar format is designed to maximise the benefits of the inter-disciplinary and inter-professional meetings. Finally, the Seminar Series is informative in the sense that, as well being productive of critical proposals for policy and legislative reform, the seminars and outputs (detailed below) will be a valuable source of information on current theory and practice.

Who will benefit from this Seminar Series?

Those outside of academic and research institutions who will gain direct benefit from the Seminar Series and the outputs generated by it are a) those bodies and professions to whom our non-academic output (end of project report) is intended to be addressed, and amongst whom it will be primarily presented and disseminated; b) Healthcare professionals involved in treating potential victims or perpetrators of 'transmission crimes' and also independent research bodies, both of which will benefit from the practioner-focused publications printed in the high-impact journal 'Sexually Transmitted Infections' (BMA). In summary then, the direct beneficiaries of the project are:

1. The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)

2. The Law Commission (criminal law team)

3. Practioners in sexual healthcare clinics (e.g. the British Association of Sexual Health and HIV, the British HIV Association)

4. Independent research bodies involved in public health work (e.g. SIGMA research)

Those who will derive indirect benefit are those other important organisations and institutions that have been invited to participate in the discussions and to give papers in response to the CPS and Law Commission presentations that will also contribute to the policy-oriented output. The participation of these organisations is integral to the Seminar Series, and although their role in the report is largely one of helping to produce it (through contributing to seminar sessions) rather than consuming it, it is anticipated that they will also derive benefit from the output they helped to create. These beneficiaries include:

1. Charities working with people living with disease and working to reduce crime (e.g. the Terrence Higgins Trust, Positively UK, Herpes Viruses Association, Hep C Trust).

2. If our engagement with the Law Commission and the CPS, in collaboration with other relevant public health and criminal justice professionals leads either to improvements of policy or practise in the CPS, or to proposals for legislative reform published by the Commission, then the beneficiaries will also include people affected by disease and crime.

How will they benefit from the Seminar Series?

All the listed beneficiaries will derive benefit, firstly by being able to take advantage of an opportunity to engage in directed discussion with other relevant professionals as well as academic experts, and secondly because the seminars are geared towards producing high-impact outputs:

a) A policy-oriented end of project report summarizing the extent to which agreement between participants was reached on the effectiveness of current policy, and whether reform is needed. This report is intended to benefit relevant organisations and in this way to have non-academic impact by being disseminated to those organisations that participated, as well as to others. Any recommendations made will relate directly to the work of the CPS and the Law Commission, and the usefulness of the report to all relevant participating organisations will be ensured by its having been produced collaboratively with the assistance of representatives.

b) The Editor-in-Chief of 'Sexually Transmitted Infections' Professor Jackie Cassell has agreed that a number of suitable papers submitted as part of the Seminar Series may be considered for publication in the journal. In November 2011 we will send out a general Call for paper presentations (to fill the available slots in the seminars), chapter contributions to our academic book and also papers for publication in 'Sexually Transmitted Infections').