Afterword: Police, policing, and HIV: new partnerships and paradigms

By re-envisioning the role of law enforcement as supporting harm reduction, evidence-based substance use treatment, and the protections of human rights for all citizens, the goals of disease prevention and public safety can both be met. Harm reduction is an effective outreach tool for prevention, for public safety, and for accessing those who want, and need, access to drug treatment services. Partnering with law enforcement in new strategic alliances can empower public health authorities, and allow the voices and concerns of substance users to be heard in debates relevant to their lives and needs. And, as Professor Crofts has shown, police to police dialogues can be steps in the process of moving from aggressive resistance to harm reduction, to an embrace of the principles of engagement, health-centered approaches, and pragmatism.What remains to be done? As the reports here demonstrate, the ongoing use of detention, particularly novel forms of administrative detention without trial for substance users in Southeast Asia and in China, have emerged as real threats to the health and wellbeing of people who use substances or who have been detained for their putative use. These facilities continue to expand in too many countries, and continue to profit from the unpaid labor of detainees. This approach to substance use violates public health principles and human rights, but also undermines the role of law enforcement, creating parallel systems under uncertain legal grounds and often outside the scrutiny of courts and legal systems. This is bad public policy, bad public health, and threatens to undermine the impressive advances in policing practice documented here.We can do better. And the evidence now suggests that many states and countries are doing better. The theme of the 19th International AIDS Conference in July of 2012 is “Turning the Tide Together.” The theme attempts to capture the new optimism that an “AIDS Free Generation” is possible with the impressive new tool