An economy of protection: agency, responsibility and the criminalization of HIV

This article analyzes the protection logic that legitimizes criminalization and investigates how this logic affects gender and state-citizen relations. Viewing criminalization as a political response to the challenge HIV poses to the post-Cold War security state, the article examines the intersection between protection as a pretext for controlling vulnerable groups and criminalization as a way to withdraw protection. The article analyzes the constructions of those in need of protection (referents) and the providers of protection according to HIV-specific state laws and media reports of arrests and prosecutions, and it shows that the requirements for being considered worthy of protection are highly gendered. The article argues that laws and the media construct the idea that a popular demand for protection exists and that criminalization practices are produced as the supply needed to meet this demand.