Prodita Sabarini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
"This is not a correctional institute. This is an annihilation center," an inmate serving time at Salemba prison, Central Jakarta, said Thursday.
The skinny, tattooed man was wide-eyed. The tough face he wore while he was outside, free from incarceration, was nowhere to be seen. His was now a more childlike face, filled with apprehension and curiosity.
Blood splotches and spent needles left on prison cell floors by fellow junkie inmates are frequent sights for this inmate.
These scenes frighten him.
He occupies a 2x2-meter box of a cell with 12 other inmates. He sleeps on the same floor with the other junkies and shares the same bucket of water with them.
"Can I get HIV from that?" he asked AIDS activist Baby Jim Aditya.
On Thursday, Baby was giving her weekly class on AIDS prevention to around 40 inmates at Salemba prison.
"Well, not if you don't touch the blood. If you have a wound somewhere on your body and it had contact with the blood, there's a possibility," she replied.
Wearing shorts and mostly barefoot, some of the convicts have scabs and open wounds on their flesh.
This is only one of the many ways inmates are at risk of being infected with HIV/AIDS.
The more obvious, direct way is through needle sharing among injecting-drug users.
"Are there lots of putaw here?" Baby asked the men (putaw is their term for crack-cocaine).
"Yes," they quickly answered
"Sodomy?" she asked again.
"Yeah, that too," they responded in a choir-like manner. Baby did not have to ask whether they used condoms.
"Can we get HIV from that?" one of the inmates asked.
"Sure you can," Baby answered.
The prison system has been in the media's spotlight recently with reports of inmates dying after being infected with HIV/AIDS. Authorities have reported that 70 percent of inmate deaths were related to HIV/AIDS. In Jakarta alone, 351 inmates died last year.
According to Baby, 60-70 percent of inmates were incarcerated for drug-related crimes. Half of these are injecting-drug users and 80 percent are infected with HIV.
The drug users do not stop using drugs while in prison. The inmates also engage in dangerous sexual activities without access to prophylactics.
"It's easy to get drugs here. It's cheaper as well," 23-year-old Taufik said.
Taufik has been injecting crack-cocaine since he was 12. He shares a needle with at least three, sometimes four other junkies each time he shoots up.
He said that visitors smuggle the drugs inside the prison.
Taufik said that in prison, money was the true power tool. "You can get away with anything if you have money," he said.
At the prison's check point, where visitors pass guards to enter, it is plain to see money being slipped to the guards at the post. The money is swiftly placed into the guards' pockets.
Taufik said money can buy comfort in prison and that inmates who do not have the luxury of being rich usually share a cell with between nine and 12 other inmates. Those with money can obtain a private room with a television and an air conditioner.
"Money gives you power," he said.
Baby said that in prison, power relations define the prisoners' way of life. "It's like being in the jungle. The one who has power wins. The convicts, especially the poor ones, usually do not have any power. That's why inside prison walls, they lose their roughness and become the weak ones," she said.
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