ABSTRACT
HIV/AIDS has become a pandemic affecting millions of people around the world. Nigeria has prevalence of 5% and prisons could serve as breeding grounds. A cross sectional study was carried out to elicit the socio-demographic characteristics, knowledge, attitudes and practices among the inmates of Kaduna Convict prison associated with transmission and prevention of HIV/AIDS. Four hundred and forty (440) inmates were interviewed using structured questionnaires after pretesting and 2 FGD sessions. Also the seven departments of the prison were appraised in the area of HIV/AIDS control programmes. The study demonstrated that majority of the inmates (75.9%) were between the ages of 20 - 39 years, males (87.4%), 54% had secondary education, 54% were singles, 26.9% traders and 55% were incarcerated for 1-5 years. Fraud/forgery/cheating were the most common crimes committed (16.8%). Almost all the respondents (96.1%) had heard of AIDS mostly through reading (25.5%), although only few had seen or known cases of AIDS (15.4%). Despite the fair to average knowledge about the causative agent, modes of transmission of the virus, methods of prevention, wrong conception and attitudes, some inmates indulged in high risk behaviours and practices (sexual and non-sexual) associated with AIDS transmission. There were no concrete programmes on ground by the prison authorities for the prevention and control of the disease. It is recommended that there should be well organize IEC sensitization programmes on HIV/AIDS for both the prison staff and the inmates, increase the ratio of staff to inmates to improve supervision, proper classification of cells, provision of social amenities and drugs among others (e.g. Anti TB, ARV etc) to the inmates like other members of the society, provision of harm reduction devices such as barbing clippers, condoms, etc by the prison authorities and provision of soft loan and/or employment to inmates on completion of sentences to enable them start a meaningful life.