Mary Lucey herself served 18 months in Frontera Women’s Prison, now called the California Institution for Women. It was here she saw the reality of what people with AIDS (PWA) in prison face. If you were a prisoner in California testing HIV+ you would be placed in a segregated unit, lose access to work and study programs (losing access to work programs means losing the opportunity to reduce your prison time), are denied overnight visits with spouse or family, provided inadequate medical care, and increased violence from prison staff. PWAs in prison would die twice as fast as those with AIDS who were not incarcerated, and had no incentive to get tested.^[1] Mary’s efforts and ACT UP/LA’s protest of the conditions for prisoners with HIV and AIDS led to the compassionate release of Judy Cagle, a woman with AIDS near the end of her life.

[Judy Cagle - Women Alive article and newspaper clippings]

Citations
[1] “Speech on PWAs,” box 1, folder 15, Mary Lucey and Nancy MacNeil Collection, The June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, Los Angeles, CA.