Penal institutions are no drugfree or sexfree areas. Although there are differences from prison to prison, from north to south and from urban to rural prisons, drugs seem to be easily available in prison. In contrast to Hepatitis B, at this moment no vaccination has been developped against Hepatitis C. Data collection for the spread of Hepatitis B and C has just begun. A seroconversion undoubtedly occured in prison. The spread of the relatively sensitive HI-Virus in prison probably has been overestimated in recent years.
Compulsory testing is legal only in the state of Bavaria, where almost all prisoners are tested.
Officially testing is still carried out on a voluntary basis with the explicit threat of forced testing as a possibility at least, for high risk groups. In other states such as Northrhine-Westfalia, prisoners only are encourage to take the test. In other states such as Berlin the percentage of tested prionsers is below 50 per cent. The extreme case is Bremen, where testing is not only voluntary but anonymous as far as the prison administration is concerned. So a considerable number of prisoners are not tested and therefore the result is not known to the penal institution administration.