Conjugal Prison Visits

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that proponents argue that providing prisoners with normal family relations including conjugal rights will (1) somewhat counteract the pain of imprisonment, (2) ease frustration among prisoners, (3) strengthen family ties and (4) encourage normal sexual patterns for married inmates. The author points out that opposition to conjugal visits argue that (1) only a minority of prisoners are married, (2) the state prisons don't have facilities to use for such a program, (3) this privilege would create jealousy among those prisoners unable or not allowed to participate and (4) spouses might be embarrassed by the openly sexual nature of the program. The paper concludes that creating a conjugal visitation program is not appropriate for this state's prison population because implementing this program would be costly and the research does not demonstrate solid benefits either in a more sexually normalized prison population or by showing that the prisoners would return to a stable family, which might reduce recidivism.

From the Paper:

"The state with the longest history of allowing conjugal visits for prisoners exists in the state of Mississippi. Gray-Ray (2000) looked at Mississippi's history of allowing conjugal visits for selected prisoners and found that its roots are based upon tradition rather than science, as it appears that Mississippi has allowed conjugal rights for selected Mississippi prisoners for more than a century. Perhaps because of this history, Mississippi went to the expense of actually building apartments for prisoner use during family visits. While an expensive approach, the apartments provide a way for inmates to have normalized interactions with all family members including any children rather than with the spouse alone."

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