I was surprised when I read that yesterday the State of California approved funds for giving condoms to prisons in order to prevent the transmission of sexual diseases. Now inmates can have safe sex behind the bars, even though having intercourse there is actually banned.

Sex in prison is a theme you usually hear talking about just in films. I remember Edward Norton playing in "The 25th Hour", in a scene when he is about to go to prison and admits his terror of being raped. This is a sad issue about which there is still a public unconsciousness. In 1974 Carl Weiss and David James Friar wrote that 46 million Americans would one day be incarcerated; of that number, they claimed, 10 million would be raped. This is the reason for a state's ban against sex in prisons.

The point of Assemblyman Rob Bonta - the promoter of the bill - is that to give condoms paid for by taxpayers' money is cheaper than treating prisoners after they get ill. The EU, Indonesia, South Africa and other countries have already taken similar measures.

Having an opinion about these subjects it is not so easy, HIV prevention must be done in at-risk situations, like in prison. On the other hand, what about the fact we are talking about rape and not normal sexual intercourses?

Prisoners do not seem to have the possibility - or sometimes the will - to express their opinion, while the knowledge of the problem and then the solution should probably come directly from them.