As the rate of black Americans contracting HIV rises along with the rate of black males incarcerated in the nation’s prisons, an AIDS advocacy group is recommending curbing the virus through voluntary tests of prisoners for HIV and by distributing condoms in jails.

The recommendations of the National Minority AIDS Council are intended to help inmates who test positive for the virus and protect others from becoming infected by risky sex in jail – or from infecting others when they are released from prison. These recommendations could affect the spread of the virus through the black community, where more than half of the new HIV cases have been diagnosed, according to the Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention.

But in Rhode Island, where inmates are routinely tested for HIV and given free medical care and counseling, corrections officials balk at handing out condoms.

Sex is forbidden at the Adult Correctional Institutions, said Ellen Alexander, assistant director of administration at the Department of Corrections. “It’s our position, if we provide condoms we’d be condoning coercive sex,” Alexander said.

The infectious diseases specialist who works with the prisoners also says that distributing condoms is a difficult political sell.

“It’s a great idea, but how much public benefit are you going to get from it?” questioned Dr. Josiah Rich, who runs the prison’s infectious diseases program with Dr. Timothy P. Flanigan, the head of infectious diseases at Miriam Hospital, Rhode Island Hospital and Brown Medical School. “On the other hand, the testing has gotten us a huge bang for the buck.”

In 1988, just six years after the first HIV case was diagnosed in Rhode Island, the General Assembly passed a law mandating HIV tests for all sentenced inmates and offering the tests to those awaiting trial. Inmates who test positive for HIV are given free medical treatment, counseling and medications, and follow-up care when they are released, plus their partners are encouraged to be tested.

About 14,000 inmates are tested at the ACI each year, and of those, about 3 percent have tested positive for HIV or AIDS, Rich said. During the last fiscal year, the department spent $654,000 on HIV medications for inmates — about 23 percent of the department’s entire medications budget — and $25,000 for the infectious diseases medical services, Alexander said.

The tests are a window into the spread of the virus in Rhode Island — and a way to help HIV-positive inmates and their partners.

There’s no telling how many Rhode Islanders have HIV and don’t know it. But out of those who have been diagnosed with the virus, one out of three learned of it because they were tested at the ACI, Rich said.

“All of that would have been missed if you didn’t diagnose them up front,” Rich said. “There’s no question in my mind that this program has reduced the epidemic in this state.”

The National Minority AIDS Council also recommends establishing more affordable housing to create stable communities, drug-treatment services and clean needle exchanges. But the group focused on minorities in prison because of the high rate of imprisoned black men.

Nationally, black men are seven times more likely than white men and three times more likely than Hispanics to be incarcerated. In Rhode Island, whites make up half of the population at the ACI, but blacks are incarcerated at more than 10 times the rate of whites, according to figures from the Rhode Island Family Life Center. Based on those numbers, 1 out of every 30 blacks in Rhode Island is at the ACI serving time or awaiting trial.

Nationwide, the rate of AIDS in prison is three times higher than the general population, according to 2003 statistics from the Department of Justice. About 2 percent of inmates in state prisons and 1.1 percent in federal prisons are HIV-positive.

Condoms are banned or unavailable in 95 percent of the prisons in the United States, according to the council’s report. Only Mississippi and Vermont make condoms available in their state prisons, along with county jails in New York City, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The National Minority AIDS Council’s report cited a study by the Georgia Department of Corrections and Department of Public Health that reviewed HIV cases of prisoners from 1988 to 2006 and found a few contracted the virus while in prison.

Researchers from Brown University Medical School conducted a similar study that reviewed a sample of inmates at the ACI between 1998 and 2000 and didn’t find any cases of HIV transmitted between inmates.

The doctors know there’s sex in prison, whether it’s consensual or rape. Rhode Island is one of 16 states to receive two-year grants from the Bureau of Justice under the 2003 Prison Rape Elimination Act. The state is using a $599,000 grant to educate staff and inmates about the problem, encourage victims to report rape, hire an investigator for prison sexual-assault cases and hire two more probation officers and a planner to work with perpetrators and victims as they are released from prison, Alexander said.

Reducing rapes could reduce the transmission of diseases. But to Rich, the issue comes down to drug addiction. HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is often spread through sex or intravenous drug use, and drugs are often the reason why many end up in prison, Rich said.

“I think there’s a much bigger issue here than whether we’re giving out condoms to prisoners,” he said. “The thing about condoms is I don’t think it’s going to make much of a difference.”