Reverend's Calling:
Helping Those with AIDS in Prison

Rev. Doris Green

For more than 25 years, the Rev. Green has worked to reform the way the prison system views and treats HIV – from addressing homophobia to maintaining voluntary testing among inmates and offering transitional support upon release.

The presence of HIV/AIDS in the correctional system is often overlooked, but with the number of infected inmates estimated to be more than 14 times higher than the general population, it can hardly be ignored. Illinois alone reported 471 prisoners with HIV/AIDS in 2002, but the real number of infected inmates could be as high as 900.

According to experts, there is a deep racial divide between African Americans and other infected inmates, due in part to the rise in incarceration rates. African Americans make up almost half of the total AIDS cases reported in Illinois since 1981. Additionally, nearly 66% of Illinois women living with HIV are African American.

The Rev. Green believes in a comprehensive approach to educating the African-American community about the prevention and treatment of HIV. She lobbies for educational funding for both the prisons and the community, understanding that the money must follow the epidemic.

For the first time, as the AIDS Foundation of Chicago's (AFC) Director of Community Affairs, the Rev. Green will join more than a hundred fellow advocates, including 14 church associates and former inmate Dr. Charles Knox, at AFC's Fifth Annual Caring for Our Communities Lobby Day event in Springfield on April 13. This year AFC hopes to increase awareness about HIV/AIDS and its roll and prevalence in the state’s correctional system.

The Rev. Green wasn’t always a faith-based advocate. Born and raised on the rough streets of Chicago’s South Side, she fled the city to raise her own family in Schaumburg where there wasn’t a fellow African American within an 8-mile radius. After learning about the challenges facing inmates through a video shown in her church, she followed in her mother’s footsteps and began volunteering. “I was just a lay person trying to find something to do.” After taking typing classes in order to assist the pastors with their outreach work, she began making regular trips to the prisons.

The Rev. Green began the arduous task of ordination shortly after being refused admittance to the hospital to visit a correctional officer. The officer had been stabbed by an inmate and the inmate had been shot – both were friends of hers. It was then that she made up her mind, and “nothing stands in the way of a made up mind,” she said. In 1988, four years later, she became a reverend and never looked back.

She formed the volunteer group Men and Women Prison Ministries, still active today, that provides substance abuse training and support for inmates and their families.

Today, the Rev. Green continues to serve the church and prison communities through her work at the AIDS Foundation of Chicago. She joined AFC in 2001 as the corrections coordinator to carry out a four-year project, managing 15 case-workers, transitioning HIV-positive inmates out of prison. The project was recently extended, but the grant now only allots enough money for twocaseworkers.

Knowing that “African American churches are one of the strongest foundations in African American communities,” she has helped to secure funding for 11 churches in the Chicago area that have committed to increasing HIV/AIDS awareness. They too recognize the need for a culturally sensitive and comprehensive approach to the Black community versus the traditional “abstinence only” education. According to the Rev. Green, these churches help conduct “rubber meets the road type of outreach.” They educate from the pulpit and canvas the neighborhoods, local taverns and beauty shops, with literature.

“It’s not a job to me, it is part of the mission,” she said. “I had to get involved in this process, not doing so is to simply sit back and let things happen. Too many people are dying -- it’s a matter of life or death.”

Press Release

Corrections Funding A lert

2005 Priorities

2005 Legislation

2005 Lobby Days


Meet the Advocates:

George Martinez receives first-annual Mary Dixon AIDS Advocacy Award

Rev. Green advocates for those with AIDS in Prison

Jim Pickett: Helping train AIDS advocates (Time Out Chicago)