Book Review: Punishing disease: HIV and the criminalization of sickness

• Published date: 01 March 2021
• Author: Jordan Nichols
• DOI: 10.1177/1057567719883333
• Date: 01 March 2021
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

Book Reviews
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Hoppe, T. (2017). Punishing disease: HIV and the criminalization of sickness. Oakland, CA: University of
California Press. 288 pp. $32.95. ISBN 9780520291607.
Reviewed by: Jordan Nichols
, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA, USA
DOI: 10.1177/1057567719883333
Hoppe delivers a compelling critique of criminal justice’s incursion into public health. Examining
efforts to criminalize disease through a case study of HIV, Hoppe sheds light on the mechanisms that
facilitate the legitimization of criminalization as a disease control strategy and the consequences of
that approach. Leaning on the early link made between AIDS and homosexuality, Hoppe outlines the
potential for diseases to crystalize a specific set of social anxieties to propagate blame and highlights
blame’s powerful role in starting the process through which sickness becomes criminal. Hoppe’s
searing analysis forces readers to confront the assumptions embedded in perceptions of public health
threats, acknowledge the role of prejudice and power, and uncover the harm perpetuated by punitive
approaches to disease control. In Punishing Disease, Hoppe sets out to convince policy makers and
the public that the effects of criminalization are predictable, reproducing stigma at the expense of—
not in support of—public health. Through astonishingly detailed and varied analyses, Hoppe
achieves this purpose, outlines remedial policy options, and proposes a conceptual map to assist
stakeholders in recognizing this debilitating response to disease before its effects can be institutio-
nalized in new battlegrounds, such as hepatitis and meningitis.
Punishing Disease outlines the progression from coercion to punishment to criminalization in its
two sections: (1) Punitive Disease Control and (2) The Criminalization of Sickness. While Hoppe is
careful to contrast coercion and punishment, the book’s formal organization understates the first
phase in the progression. Hoppe’s remedial policy options provide a glimpse of what...