SCALAWAG

Reckoning with the South

prison have conjugal visits

This couple wants you to know that conjugal visits are only legal in 4 states

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Pocket (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)

prison have conjugal visits

Editor's note: This story was co-written by inside-outside couple Steve Higginbotham and Jordana Rosenfeld, weaving together Jordana's personal experience and reporting with letters from Steve. Together, they examine popular myths around conjugal visits, their decreasing availability, and the punitive logic behind the state's policing of sex and intimacy that stifles relationships like theirs.   Jordana's words appear below in the orange boxes on the right; Steve's are in the purple on the left.

prison have conjugal visits

The other day, when I told my grandmother I was researching the history of conjugal visits for an essay, she said, "Oh, like in my stories?" 

You can't talk about conjugal visits without talking about television, because television is pretty much the only place where conjugal visits still exist. A wide variety of TV shows either joke about or dramatize conjugal visits, from popular sitcoms that have little to nothing to do with prison life, like The Simpsons , Family Guy , and Seinfeld, to prestige dramas like Prison Break and Oz that purport to offer "gritty" and "realistic" prison tales. Conjugals loom large in public imagination about life in prison, which leaves people under the unfortunate impression that they are in any kind of way widespread or accessible.

Their availability has been in steady decline for more than 25 years. The mid-to-late 1990s are the often-cited high point of conjugal visits , with 17 states offering some kind of program. (Federal and maximum security prisons do not allow conjugals.) This means that at their most widespread, conjugal visits were only ever permitted in one-third of all states. 

There are only four U.S. states that currently allow conjugal visits, often called "extended" or "family" visits: California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington. Some people say Connecticut's program doesn't count though, when it comes to conjugals—and the Connecticut Department of Corrections agrees. Their family visit program is explicitly intended for the benefit of children and requires that the incarcerated person receiving visitors be a parent. Their child must attend . 

My boyfriend has been in prison for 28 years. He was 18 during the high point of conjugal visit programs. That's when the state of Missouri decided to lock him up for the rest of his natural life, effectively sentencing him to a lifetime of deep loneliness and sexual repression, not just because Missouri doesn't offer conjugal visits, but because when you are incarcerated, your body belongs to the state in every possible way—from your labor to your sex life. 

Every prison riot ever could have been prevented with some properly organized fucking.

prison have conjugal visits

That's my boyfriend, Steve.

Not being able to physically express love—or even lust—builds frustration that boils over in unintended ways. 

Intimacy is policed rigidly in prison, and it has certainly worsened over the years. For most people with incarcerated lovers, intimacy happens not on a conjugal visit, but in the visiting room. Visits now may start and end with a brief embrace and chaste kiss. Open mouth kissing has been outlawed. These rules are enforced with terminated visits and even removing a person from the visiting list for a year or more.

Steve and I have kissed a total of six times.

We have also hugged six times, if you don't count us posing with his arm over my shoulder three times for pictures. The kisses were so brief that I'm not sure I remember what they felt like. He told me later on the phone that he knew he had to be the one to pull away from the kiss before we gave the COs in the bubble reason to intervene because I wouldn't. He knew this, somehow, before he ever kissed me. He was right. 

When I last visited him in Jefferson City Correctional Center, Steve told me about a real conjugal visit from '90s Missouri.

Years ago, people used to mess around in the visiting room at Potosi [Correctional Center]. Everyone knew to keep their sensitive visitors away from a certain area, because there was frequent sex behind a vending machine. I can neither confirm nor deny that cops were paid to turn a blind eye to it. I met a guy recently in my wing at JCCC who said he had heard of me, and that maybe I knew his father. I did know his father. I didn't have the heart to tell him that I probably saw his conception behind a Coke machine back in 1995.

The increasing restriction of physical touch—the expanded video surveillance of visiting spaces, the use of solitary confinement for the smallest infractions, and the withering of both in-person and conjugal visit programs—reflects the punitive logic that consensual human touch is a privilege that incarcerated people do not deserve.

This is an evil proposition, and it's one that is at the core of the ongoing dehumanization of millions of people in U.S. prisons, and the millions of people like me who love them. 

One woman with an incarcerated partner put it to researchers this way: "The prison system appears to be set up to break families up." And she's right. For the duration of his incarceration, I will never be closer to Steve than the state of Missouri is. I'm reminded during each of our timed kisses: His primary partner is the state. 

The most difficult part for me about a romantic relationship with a free woman is that I feel selfish. A lot of self-loathing thoughts creep in. I want the best for her and often question if I am that "best." However, an added benefit is that we can truly take things slowly and explore each other in ways that two free people don't often experience nowadays. We write emails daily. And these are important. We vent. And listen. We continue to build, whereas many free people stop building at consummation. 

But these are the realities rarely captured in media portrayals of romantic relationships between free world and incarcerated partners. Conjugals on TV are so disconnected from what it's actually like to be in a romantic relationship with an incarcerated person: Trying to schedule my life around precious 15 minute phone calls, paying 25 cents to send emails monitored by correctional officers, finding ways to symbolically include Steve in my life, like leaving open the seat next to me at the movies. Instead, television shows depict implausible scenarios of nefarious rendezvous that often parrot law enforcement lies. When they do so, they undermine the public's ability to conceptualize that love and commitment fuel relationships like ours. 

Although contraband typically enters prisons through staff , not visitors , television shows often present conjugal visits as a cover for smuggling, like in the earliest TV plot I could find involving a conjugal visit, from a 1986 Miami Vice episode. After his girlfriend is killed, Tubbs gets depressed enough to agree to go undercover at a state prison to bust some guards selling cocaine. In his briefing on the issue, Tubbs asks how the drugs are getting into the prison. Conjugal visits and family visits are the first two methods named by the prison commissioner, never mind that I have yet to find any evidence that Florida ever allowed those kinds of visits. 

Often, the excuse for policing visits so strictly is that drugs can be exchanged. But I know that lie is used for every type of control in prison. For over a year we had NO CONTACT visits because of the pandemic. During that time, dozens of inmates [at my facility] still overdosed and had drug-related episodes that caused them to need medical attention. Those drugs certainly didn't arrive through visits. They strip search and X-ray me going to and from visits anyway.

Everything in prison now is on camera. When a drug overdose occurs, the investigators track back over footage from visiting room cameras. One officer told me that while they were investigating drugs allegedly passing through the visiting room, they saw a guy covertly fingering his wife. This has happened on more than one occasion, but most guards will have enough of a heart not to bother with violations for some covert touching that wasn't caught until the camera review. Most. Sometimes, a rare asshole will just have to assert his power and write a CDV (conduct violation).

Write-ups or CDVs are given by staff at their discretion. The threat of solitary confinement is always looming in prison. It's another clever way of withholding physical interactions with other human beings as a form of torture. Solitary confinement for anywhere from 10 days to three months is a favorite punishment for "[nonviolent] sexual misconduct. " 

There's also a persistent media narrative that prison systems offer conjugal visit programs out of genuine concern for human welfare. A brief glance at the origins of conjugal visits in the U.S. prison system quickly disproves that theory, showing that conjugal visit programs were conceived as a tool of exploitation and social control. 

Conjugal visits originated in Mississippi at the infamous prison plantation, Mississippi State Penitentiary, or Parchman Farm. Mississippi state officials opened Parchman in the early 1900s, writes historian David Oshinsky in his book Worse than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice, in order to ensnare free Black people into forced labor. Mississippi, like other Southern states during Reconstruction, passed "Black Codes" that assigned harsh criminal penalties to minor "offenses" such as vagrancy, loitering, living with white people, and not carrying proof of employment—behaviors that were not considered criminal when done by white people. Using the crime loophole in the relatively new 13th Amendment, Mississippi charged thousands of Black people with crimes and forced them to work on the state's plantation. 

Parchman officials started offering sex to Black prisoners as a productivity incentive, "because prison officials wanted as much work as possible from their Negro convicts, whom they believed to have greater sexual needs than whites," Oshinsky writes.

"I never saw it, but I heard tell of truckloads of whores bein' sent up from Cleveland at dusk," said a Parchman prison official quoted by Oshinsky. "The cons who had a good day got to get 'em right there between the rows. In my day, we got civilized—put 'em up in little houses and told everybody that them whores was wives. That kept the Baptists off our backs." 

A certain kind of sexual morality has been instilled in the minds of many people with conservative religious upbringings. They naturally force this morality on people they consider children. That is how many guards see prisoners: as children.

Many states did not begin to join Mississippi in offering conjugal visits until much later in the century, when conservative governors like California's Ronald Reagan would determine in 1968 that allowing some married men to have sex with their wives was the best way to reduce " instances of homosexuality " in prisons. 

Abolitionists who wrote the book Queer (In)Justice , consider how concerned prison administrations have historically been and continue to be about queer sex in prisons. The book exposes both the deep fear of the liberatory potential of queer sexuality, and a broader reality that prisons are inherently queer places since prisons' "denial of sexual intimacy and agency is a quintessential queer experience." 

Beyond behavioral control, the rules that determine conjugal visit eligibility are always also about enforcing criminality, since the state decides what kind of charges render someone ineligible to wed or to have an extended visit. Even in the four states that allow these visits, most people with "violent" charges are only allowed to hold their lover's hand and briefly embrace at the beginning and end of visits.

We don't even have enough privacy to masturbate. 

I can be written up if anyone sees my dick, especially in the act of masturbation. I could face solitary confinement, loss of job, visits, religious programs, treatment classes, recreation, canteen spend, and school for getting written up. Conversely, I can be strip-searched at any given time and be forced to show everything.  

Living in this fishbowl has taught me there is no hiding. Too many bored eyes in the same small area to miss anything. Guards may come knocking on the door at any moment. My cellmate is often inches away from me, and it takes coordination to manage time away from each other because we eat, sleep, go to yard, and do just about everything on the same schedule. 

I choose to skip a meal occasionally and embrace the hunger, because it is much less painful than persistent relentless desire. After years of self-release in showers, in a room with snoring cellmates, or as quickly as possible when a brief moment of privacy occurs, my sex drive is all shook up. Current turn-ons could be said to include faucets running and/or snoring men.

Ultimately, this article is not about the right to conjugal visits. It's about the ways that punitive isolation and deprivation of loving physical contact have always been tactics of the U.S. prison system. 

Regardless of the quality of the representations, the prevalence of conjugal visits in movies and TV allows people to avoid thinking too hard about what it's like to be deprived of your sexual autonomy, maybe the rest of your life.

I have been locked up since I was 18, and I am 47 now. To be horny in prison for decades is painful. To the body and soul. 

There is justice as well as pleasure at stake here, and the difference between the two is slight. 

People who love someone in prison live shorter and harder lives. That we do it anyway shows the significance, centrality, and life-affirming nature of intimate relationships to those on both sides of the wall. Maybe it even points to the abolitionist power of romantic and sexual love between incarcerated and "free" people.

So, I guess we start with that thought and work from there to find a way to tear down the system.

prison have conjugal visits

As part of Scalawag's 3rd annual Abolition Week,  pop justice  is exclusively featuring perspectives from currently and formerly incarcerated folks and systems-impacted folks.

More in pop justice:.

'It's not a story—it's a life:' A look at Snapped, from the inside

'It's not a story—it's a life:' A look at Snapped, from the inside

Come on Barbie, give us nothing!

Come on Barbie, give us nothing!

Barbie: Pretty Police

Barbie: Pretty Police

"Pull up your pants or go to jail!"

"Pull up your pants or go to jail!"

Related stories:, steve higginbotham & jordana rosenfeld.

Steve Higginbotham is a writer who spent many years narrating and transcribing materials into braille for the Missouri Center for Braille & Narration Production . He is serving a death by incarceration sentence in Jefferson City, Missouri. Jordana Rosenfeld is a journalist in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. More of her work can be found at jordanarosenfeld.com .

prison have conjugal visits

e

Sex, Love, & Marriage Behind Bars

What are conjugal visits really like? Incarcerated journalist John J. Lennon takes Esquire inside one of the last bastions of prisoner intimacy in America: trailers of New York.

I first heard about the trailers, prison vernacular for conjugal visits, on Rikers Island. It was 2002, I was twenty-four, and I was awaiting trial on murder charges. The guy the next bunk over in the communal dorm knew I was facing a lot of time, even if I didn’t know that. I was delusional in the beginning. We all are.

The bunkmate had just finished a dime—a ten-year sentence—for assault and was now in on a parole violation for breaking curfew, caught on a tip called in by his wife. Still, he loved her, and he loved telling me about going on conjugals with her up in Auburn, a maximum-security prison. It wasn’t just about the sex, he said. It was forty-eight hours of freedom, or close to it. Most of New York’s maximum-security prisons had them. They weren’t trailers, not anymore, but modular homes. He described the units: two, sometimes three bedrooms—the prison supplied pillows, bed linens, towels, and washcloths—a living room, a bathroom, and a full kitchen stocked with pots and pans, a coffee maker, a blender, and utensils. A wire bolted to the counter next to the sink was connected to the handle of the kitchen knife. His wife would bring clothes, cosmetics, and groceries: milk, eggs, pork chops, shelled shrimp. Glass containers weren’t allowed; neither was alcohol, not even as a makeup ingredient. Outside there was a picnic table, a barbecue pit, and a children’s play area.

conjugal visits in prison love in new york correctional facility john j lennon

It was, the fella in the next bunk told me, an opportunity for good times, good eating, and good sex. An incentive to stay out of trouble in the hope of experiencing a touch of love.

There was a hitch: Your partner had to be your legal spouse. Close family members were also eligible, of course, and this was really the objective of these visits: to build and maintain better family ties. But that was beside my bunkmate’s point. If I was convicted, he said, he recommended I put an ad on one of those prisoner dating websites (Prison Pen Pals, Write a Prisoner), find a woman, fall in love, make it official, then head for the trailers.

In 2004, I was sentenced to twenty-eight years to life. The minimum was longer than I’d been alive. Early on, I didn’t think much about the implications for my love life. At twenty-four, I’d had plenty of sex but never a real relationship, or even healthy intimacy. Besides, there were more pressing concerns: appealing my conviction, learning how to survive in this place.

I first saw the trailers at Clinton Correctional, a maximum-security prison a few miles south of the Canadian border, in Dannemora. By then I’d learned that New York’s Department of Corrections and Community Supervision didn’t actually call them conjugal visits. Only Mississippi did. While the word conjugal simply means “related to marriage,” these visits began to carry lewd implications, and other states opted to rebrand: In California, it was known as “family visiting.” In Connecticut and Washington, they were referred to as “extended family visits.” In New York, it was, and still is, called the Family Reunion Program, or FRP.

e

In 2005, I had my first FRP visit—with my mother and my aunt. My aunt cooked bacon and eggs in the morning, grilled porterhouse steaks and tossed salads for dinner. We sank into the soft couches, ate, and watched Law & Order reruns, oddly Mom’s favorite show. We talked until interrupted by the muffled screams of a couple through the wall of the attached unit. We laughed awkwardly, avoiding eye contact, and I felt kind of jealous. Three times a day, a phone in the unit rang. I picked up, spat my last name and identification number into the receiver, then stepped outside and waved to the watchtower guard. That count was one of the only reminders of prison.

When I returned to my block, guys asked how the conjugal had gone. Great, I said. When I mentioned it was with my mother and my aunt, they sort of nodded, like, Oh, that’s cool, too. I loved visiting with my family. But I did start to think about what it would be like to be with a woman again.

.css-f6drgc:before{margin:-0.99rem auto 0 -1.33rem;left:50%;width:2.1875rem;border:0.3125rem solid #FF3A30;height:2.1875rem;content:'';display:block;position:absolute;border-radius:100%;} .css-1aglugu{font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-roboto,Lausanne-local,Arial,sans-serif;font-size:1.625rem;line-height:1.2;margin:0rem;}@media(max-width: 48rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:1.75rem;line-height:1.2;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1aglugu{font-size:2.375rem;line-height:1.2;}}.css-1aglugu b,.css-1aglugu strong{font-family:inherit;font-weight:bold;}.css-1aglugu em,.css-1aglugu i{font-style:italic;font-family:inherit;}.css-1aglugu:before{content:'"';display:block;padding:0.3125rem 0.875rem 0 0;font-size:3.5rem;line-height:0.8;font-style:italic;font-family:Lausanne,Lausanne-fallback,Lausanne-styleitalic-roboto,Lausanne-styleitalic-local,Arial,sans-serif;} Trailer visits were never perfect. Sometimes they were hard. But in many ways, they felt like rehearsals for life on the outside.

I got by with my hand and my memories, with the occasional assist from Buttman or High Society. Many of us who’ve been locked up all these years try idiosyncratic methods to pleasure ourselves. Some use a Fifi—a rolled towel with a plastic bag stuffed in the crevice; inside the bag is a rubber glove lubed with Vaseline that can be warmed in a hot pot of water, if one prefers. The crevice can be tightened or loosened by a strap wrapped around the rolled towel, creating different sensations. Fucking Fifis was an intimate ritual for one of my neighbors. At night he hung a curtain across his cell bars, prepped his Fifi, rolled the whole thing up in his mattress—he said it was more like a big-booty girl that way—laid out a few porno mags, and started thrusting.

But I wasn’t looking to hump a Fifi for the next twenty-five years.

Married men in the joint who went on conjugals seemed to have the most meaningful lives: They worked out, they went on visits, they sported crispy new sneakers and polo shirts with the horse, as if to say to the rest of us, I got a lady who loves me, and I got more status than you. At least, that’s how I took it. Every few months, they disappeared—most men kept their conjugal dates to themselves to avoid attracting envy—but we all knew where they’d gone. They came back to the cellblock with hickey-covered necks, looking pleasantly tired. I decided that was how I wanted to serve my sentence.

Mississippi State Penitentiary, of all places, was the first facility in the U. S. to offer conjugal visits, in the early 1900s. Also known as Parchman Farm, the segregated prison functioned as a revenue-generating plantation that produced cotton, cattle, pork, and more; its prisoners performed all the hard labor. To incentivize their work, administrators began arranging for prostitutes to visit on Sundays, and prisoners slept with them wherever they could—tool sheds, storage areas, the barracks. At first, only Black prisoners were allowed to participate, and for deeply racist notions “about Black men’s allegedly voracious sexual natures and appetites,” says Heather Ann Thompson, author of the Pulitzer-prize-winning history of the Attica uprising, Blood in the Water, “that Black prisoners could be forced to work even harder not just under threat of the lash but also, due to their savage nature, the promise of sex.”

e

Starting around 1940, all of Parchman’s prisoners were able to participate, regardless of race. By the late fifties, prostitutes were banned, replaced by prisoners’ spouses, common-law wives, and female friends. In 1972, the program opened to the facility’s female prisoners. Still, the system was marked by prejudice. “The most important question concerning a program of conjugal visiting,” wrote Columbus Hopper in his 1969 study of Parchman, Sex in Prison, “is whether it helps to reduce the problem of homosexuality in prison.” Hopper was the leading conjugals researcher of his time, and the “problem of homosexuality” seems to have been one of the main forces behind his advocacy. Truth is, in my twenty-one years of incarceration, I’ve never been sexually assaulted or witnessed that kind of assault.

New York’s first FRP began in 1976, with five 12-foot-by-70-foot trailers in a former cow pasture at Wallkill Correctional. Attica got its trailers in 1977, six years after the prisoner uprising for more humane treatment that, when law enforcement took back the prison, left thirty-nine dead. In the first eighteen months of Attica’s FRP, 1,179 prisoners participated.

By 1993, seventeen states allowed some version of extended family visits. That year in New York, 12,401 family members attended FRPs across the state. “The effectiveness of the program is beyond dispute,” the prison commissioner wrote in an op-ed around that time.

Data supports the former commissioner’s claims. According to a recent literature review, prisons that allow conjugal visits have better disciplinary records than those that do not. What’s more, studies have determined that released prisoners with an established relationship have a much better chance of not returning to prison. (In 1980, New York’s corrections department published findings suggesting that participation in the program decreased recidivism rates by as much as 67 percent.)

Yet since the start of such programs, fierce resistance has followed. By the early nineties, the era of mass incarceration was fully under way, and across the country, prison programs that incentivized good behavior—furloughs, work release, college, conjugals—were on the chopping block. Why, the thinking went, should we coddle criminals with taxpayer money? (It’s worth noting that FRP upkeep is paid for in part by prisoner fundraisers.) And don’t conjugals present one more way to introduce contraband?

As early as 1969, when Hopper published his findings on Parchman, conjugal visits were available in Chile, Ecuador, Japan, Mexico, Costa Rica, and the Philippines. Today, that list includes Qatar, Argentina, Brazil, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, France, Russia, and Saudi Arabia.

The United States has shifted in the opposite direction. In the eyes of the law, conjugal visits are a privilege, not a right. The Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld prison administrators’ latitude to limit prisoners’ rights, including visitation, writing in 2003 that “freedom of association is among the rights least compatible with incarceration.” In 2014, Mississippi did away with its program. “There are costs associated with the staff’s time,” the state’s prison commissioner said at the time. “Then, even though we provide contraception, we have no idea how many women are getting pregnant only for the child to be raised by one parent”—as if such family planning were his call to make.

Today, only four states allow conjugal visits—New York, California, Washington, and Connecticut—though when Covid came, Connecticut’s program was suspended, and it has yet to return. Federal prisons don’t offer the privilege. New York’s program has been a success: FRP is offered at twelve of its fifteen maximum-security prisons and eleven of its twenty-six medium-security prisons. Since 2011, same-sex couples have been able to participate. Yet each year over the past decade or so, Republican state senators have introduced a bill to eliminate FRP. Conservatives preach the importance of a solid family structure. Why would they want to sabotage prisoners who are trying to build and maintain theirs?

By 2009, I was in Attica; my appeals had been denied. I was thirty-two and lonely. I’d spend hours each day watching the tiny TV in my cell. The Bachelor was my favorite show—a glimpse of intimacy, however stage-managed, and a break from my bleak reality. I felt like I was squandering an opportunity by not putting myself out there. I told Mom what the guy on Rikers Island had suggested, and she put an ad on the prison dating website Friends Beyond the Wall.

Danielly was a year younger than me and lived with her teenage son in a housing project on the Lower East Side. “I’m Dominican, and brown. Do you like that?” she wrote. Yes, yes, I loved it! In an early letter, I brought up the trailers, told her to imagine an uninterrupted weekend together in a sort of cabin, no cell phones, no distractions—just us. She didn’t need to be sold. Her mom had married a guy who’d done time, she told me, and she remembered visiting those little homes in the prison as a young girl.

e

Danielly started visiting me at Attica. She was my type—curvy, full of attitude and affection. We had the kind of chemistry that made my stomach flutter. But I soon learned that my type was much harder to handle on the inside than it had been when I was on the outside. The guy she’d described as her ex-boyfriend was more like her current boyfriend. When I called her, she sometimes wouldn’t answer. I was left lovesick, and that’s no way to live in prison. So I let her go.

In January 2011, I started corresponding with Raina, a California blonde, thirty-nine, who’d never been married and had no kids, and it wasn’t a dealbreaker that I’d killed a man. She had a great sense of humor, and while she’d known darkness in her own life, she’d needle anyone who took theirs too seriously. I was hooked. She was emotionally intelligent, we spoke the language of recovery, and our relationship felt safe. She moved across the country for me. One day in 2012, in Attica’s visiting room, I proposed to her, and she said yes. Six months later, we joined a few other couples in a small room with a Goofy mural painted on the wall and Attica’s town clerk seated at a table, and we got married.

By 2014—after a series of applications, denials, appeals, and interviews, including one in which Raina was told I didn’t carry any sexually transmitted diseases—we had our first FRP date.

Two days beforehand, I had to piss in a cup under a guard’s gaze for my drug screen. Then again the day of, and again after I came off the trailer. Most of the work was on Raina: shopping, traveling, then getting processed, food pushed through an X-ray machine, gloved fingers sifting through her panties and K-Y jelly.

The corrections officer escorted a handful of us through the Attica lobby, a part of the prison I had never seen before. Gates opened and closed, and we walked to the FRP compound. A fence enclosed the five red-sided homes, situated so that the rest of the prison couldn’t see in. Though the watchtower guard kept a close eye.

Sitting on the couch, looking around, I felt . . . joy. In the system, you’re always waiting, and never for anything good: trial, sentencing, transfers, getting cuffed and shackled, always in a cell or a bullpen or on a bus eating bologna sandwiches. Now I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I loved it. I got up from the couch, turned on the stereo, then walked outside on the grass, sat on the children’s swing, went back inside. I grabbed the remote, turned on the flat-screen television, flipped through the stations. To do whatever I wanted, and to be waiting for my wife so we could do whatever we wanted—I felt giddy. Through the window I watched my neighbor in his kitchen as he boiled the silverware—forks, (butter) knives, a spatula, a ladle, all metal and engraved with tracking numbers—in one pot of water, and added a few drops of scented oil to another, to perfume the place. Finally, I heard one of the guys yell, “They’re here!”

A corrections van with blue-tinted windows pulled up, and the family members got out. A little boy ran to his father and jumped in his arms. And there was Raina. The CO let me help her with her luggage, which was in a container marked with our unit number.

As soon as the door of our unit closed, we threw the groceries—including cuts of filet mignon and A.1. sauce—on the table and started awkwardly kissing. As we began to undress, there was a knock on the door. Raina put on a shirt and I cracked the door. It was the CO, who just needed our container. It was like that, the conjugals; they were such a departure from regular prison life. Even the staff interactions were all good.

e

Raina and I got back to it. It was my first time in eleven years, so I figured I’d finish fast. But it was the opposite. We went at it for a while—soft, hard, slow, fast, this way, that way—and nothing seemed to bring either of us closer to climax. It was like I’d never touched a woman before. It felt weird that nobody else was watching us. I eventually pulled out and brought myself to ejaculation.

On some level, we hadn’t expected the first time to be amazing. Though it’s hard to make bad sex better, we had to try. We loved each other. We went on six more FRP visits, but the situation didn’t improve. Our issues were less about friction and more about fantasy, or the lack thereof.

Danielly had sent me letters over the years since we’d first met, none of which I’d replied to. But in 2015, as my relationship with Raina was coming to an end, I finally wrote back, explaining my marital woes. Danielly replied that I never should have gotten married in the first place, that she was my soulmate. She said she was still on and off with her boyfriend, but he didn’t matter. If I got divorced and married her instead, she’d come to Attica and fulfill all my fantasies.

I divorced Raina and proposed to Danielly.

In October, we got married by the same Attica town clerk who’d officiated the last time. The Goofy mural was gone. We posed for our wedding picture in front of a seascape of sea lions and colorful fish. Danielly looks sad in the photo, barely smiling. She’d wanted this day to be so much more special than it was.

e

Afterward, I bribed a CO with a few packs of Newports to let the cellblock’s tattoo artist come into my cell, and with a needle made from an uncoiled lighter spring powered by a repurposed beard-trimmer motor, he inked danielly on the inside of my upper arm in looping script. Once she ditched the boyfriend for good, she had my name inked on her forearm. We craved each other. Our kisses, deep and long and wet, always felt like good sex.

I wanted to transfer to Sing Sing, forty miles north of New York City—among other reasons, it would take Danielly an hour by train, as opposed to the eleven-hour bus trip she took both ways to visit me at Attica. But Attica was a disciplinary prison, rife with violence; the number of prisoners on good behavior was low, the FRP waitlist short. You could book a spot every forty or fifty days. At Sing Sing, the wait was closer to ninety days. I weighed the pros and cons. Con: waiting twice as long to be together. Pro: saving Danielly the hassle of a big trip to the middle of nowhere, which would probably mean I’d see her more often.

I submitted my paperwork, got approved, and transferred in November 2016.

In February, we had our first FRP date. The compound was pretty much the same as the one at Attica, but at Sing Sing we got a Polaroid camera and twelve blank photos. Some couples went into the units and did not come out for the allotted forty-eight hours. Others were more social. Me and my friend Andy Gargiulo—convicted in 2006 of killing his reputed mobster brother-in-law; we’d had the same lawyer—would sometimes coordinate our FRP visits. He was a lot older than me, around eighty, but we got along. So did our better halves. His wife brought the best Italian food in Brooklyn—cannolis, fresh mozzarella, and tender veal—and when the weather was nice, the four of us would sit outside and barbecue.

Danielly was provocative, and that turned me on. We argued; we canceled visits on each other. We often had angry, shit-talking sex. Sometimes we played nice, but she’d never let it get to my head. “Boy,” she’d say, “you have so much to learn about women.” We couldn’t have sex for the entire forty-eight hours, but it sometimes felt like we were trying.

Intimacy came in other forms. She introduced me to ASMR; I brewed Bustelo for her and microwaved the half-and-half so it wouldn’t cool off the coffee too much. “Coffee,” by Miguel, became our song. We watched The Notebook, and she recited her favorite lines. We watched Warrior, and when Tom Hardy’s character hugs his drunk father, played by Nick Nolte, Danielly comforted me as I cried.

e

I know now that our relationship wasn’t healthy. My moments of joy were outweighed by my jealousy and anxiety. I’d get annoyed if she didn’t read my latest article. “You’re all into yourself and your career,” she’d say. “Women don’t like that, bro!” Or “I fell in love with the guy at Attica, before he became the writer.” That one hurt. But it’s not like I’d ask about her job as a nurse at a Bronx clinic. She’d want to talk about our future, and I’d urge her to stay in the present. She’d storm off into the bedroom, slam the door, and curse me out in rapid-fire Spanish. Well, I’d think, this is life.

By March 2020, our relationship was rocky. But for the first twenty-four hours of our first FRP in more than a year, we were getting along. As we prepped lunch, a knock came at the door. It was the security captain. Because of Covid, our visit was over, along with our last shot at rekindling.

By the time FRP visits were restored, a year and a half later, I’d been transferred to Sullivan Correctional, in the southern Catskills. Danielly came up twice. But too much time had passed, and other relationships had formed: hers with somebody else, mine with my career. Becoming a journalist in the joint brought its own stress, and my anxiety worsened; things like pissing in a cup with a guard peeking seemed impossible. Recently, we divorced.

Would I have been better off not having experienced intimacy for the past twenty-one years? Would Raina and Danielly have been better off never having met me? I’ve since realized that in both relationships, I focused more on the affection I was getting than the affection I was giving. All this time spent living in my head, confined to a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell, has rendered me less expressive and more emotionally stuck. My thoughts would bounce around my brain but never make it out of my mouth, which left Raina, then Danielly, feeling neglected. The time I used to spend writing love letters I now spend writing articles. Sometimes I feel like I took the two of them for granted. There’s an immense effort, this leap toward love in which the only physical manifestation comes in the form of conjugal visits. And it’s exerted not by the prisoners but by our partners. They wait, they shop, they lug, they travel, they get gossiped about by friends and family and insulted by COs.

Trailer visits were never perfect. Sometimes they were hard, especially at the end—me returning to prison, my woman going home alone. But in many ways, they felt like rehearsals for life on the outside. I believe that because of my experiences with conjugals, when I do get out, I’ll be more sensitive to the feelings of those closest to me. “It remains utterly and inescapably true that to be a human being is to need to be connected to, to bond with, and to be nurtured by other human beings,” Heather Ann Thompson told me. “Serving one’s sentence does not change that.”

So I’m single now. Middle-aged, too. Sometimes I imagine the kind of woman I’ll attract when I’m on the outside, and I wonder if I’ll resent her because she didn’t fall for me when I was on the inside. Which is absurd, and I know I need to work that shit out. But it also feels like a nod to the women who’ve loved me, a thank-you to all the partners who’ve sacrificed so much to share their love with those of us who are locked up.

I think about a moment Danielly and I shared with Andy and his wife, who was wearing Prada glasses and a perfume called La Vie Est Belle. The sun was bright; we sat at the picnic table, eating the best of both kitchens. Andy was talking about a TV show he watched in his cell—maybe it was America’s Got Talent —and Danielly told him how she also loved that show. While recalling the final performance of a child singer who’d recently won, Andy choked up. Right there at the wooden table, surrounded by the thirty-foot concrete wall and the guard with the AR-15 perched in the tower. Danielly teared up, too. “He gets emotional on these visits,” Andy’s wife said in a tough Brooklyn accent, smiling. More than the sex, it’s moments like these—simple, safe, and endearing—that have provided me with what prison has stripped away: a taste of intimacy.

Headshot of John J. Lennon

@media(max-width: 73.75rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.4375rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}}@media(min-width: 64rem){.css-1ktbcds:before{margin-right:0.5625rem;color:#FF3A30;content:'_';display:inline-block;}} Esquire Select Exclusives

a sword with a long handle

I Got Paid For Two Years and Never Did Any Work

diagram

I Got Paid to Spy on People While They Worked

e

God, Magic Mushroom, and Me

e

The Accidental Activist

e

I’m Losing Weight by Secretly Taking Wegovy

kansas city, missouri november 07 patrick mahomes 15 of the kansas city chiefs on the field before the game against the green bay packers at arrowhead stadium on november 07, 2021 in kansas city, missouri photo by jamie squiregetty images

The Scout Who Found Patrick Mahomes

persecution in the name of the lord

Persecution in the Name of the Lord

they called us exceptional

The Secrets That Split My Family in Half

e

The Two Weirdest Years in Music

e

He Gave Up Acting to Be an OnlyFans Performer

e

Confessions of a 'Pay Pig'

How Do Conjugal Visits Work?

conjugal visit

Maintaining close ties with loved ones while doing time can increase the chances of a successful reentry program. Although several studies back this conclusion, it’s widely logical.

While the conjugal visits concept sounds commendable, there’s an increasing call to scrap the scheme, particularly across US states. This campaign has frustrated many states out of the program, leaving only a handful. Back in 1993, 17 US states recognized conjugal visits. Today, in 2020, only four do.

The conjugal visit was first practiced in Mississippi. The state, then, brought in prostitutes for inmates. The program continued until 2014. The scrap provoked massive protests from different right groups and prisoners’ families. The protesters sought a continuance of the program, which they said had so far helped sustain family bonds and inmate’s general attitude to life-after-jail.

New Mexico, the last to scrap the concept, did so after a convicted murderer impregnated four different women in prison. If these visits look as cool as many theories postulate, why the anti-conjugal-visit campaigns in countries like the US?

This article provides an in-depth guide on how conjugal visits work, states that allow conjugal visits, its historical background, arguments for and against the scheme, and what a conjugal visit entails in reality.

What Is a Conjugal Visit?

A conjugal visit is a popular practice that allows inmates to spend time alone with their loved one(s), particularly a significant other, while incarcerated. By implication, and candidly, conjugal visits afford prisoners an opportunity to, among other things, engage their significant other sexually.

However, in actual content, such visits go beyond just sex. Most eligible prisoners do not even consider intimacy during such visits. In many cases, it’s all about ‘hosting’ family members and sustaining family bonds while they serve time. In fact, in some jurisdictions, New York, for example, spouses are not involved in more than half of such visits. But how did it all start?

Inside a prison

History of Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits origin dates back to the early 20 th century, in the then Parchman Farm – presently, Mississippi State Penitentiary. Back then, ‘qualified’ male prisoners were allowed to enjoy intimacy with prostitutes, primarily as a reward for hard work.

While underperforming prisoners were beaten, the well-behaved were rewarded in different forms, including a sex worker’s company. On their off-days, Sunday, a vehicle-load of women were brought into the facility and offered to the best behaved. The policy was soon reviewed, substituting prostitutes for inmates’ wives or girlfriends, as they wished.

The handwork-for-sex concept recorded tremendous success, and over time, about a quarter of the entire US states had introduced the practice. In no time, many other countries copied the initiative for their prisons.

Although the United States is gradually phasing out conjugal visits, the practice still holds in many countries. In Canada, for instance, “extended family visits” – a newly branded phrase for conjugal visits – permits prisoners up to 72 hours alone with their loved ones, once in few months. Close family ties and, in a few cases, friends are allowed to time alone with a prisoner. Items, like foods, used during the visit are provided by the visitors or the host – the inmate.

Over to Asia, Saudi Arabia is, arguably, one of the most generous countries when it comes to conjugal visits. Over there, inmates are allowed intimacy once monthly. Convicts with multiple wives get access to all their wives – one wife, monthly. Even more, the government foots traveling experiences for the visitors.

Conjugal visits do not exist in Great Britain. However, in some instances, prisoners incarcerated for a long period may qualify to embark on a ‘family leave’ for a short duration. This is applicable mainly for inmates whose records suggest a low risk of committing crimes outside the facility.

This practice is designed to reconnect the inmates to the real world outside the prison walls before their release . Inmates leverage on this privilege not just to reconnect with friends and family, but to also search for jobs , accommodation, and more, setting the pace for their reintegration.

Back to US history, the family visit initiative soon began to decline from around the ’80s. Now, conjugal visits only exist in California, New York, Connecticut, and Washington.

Prison Yard

Is the Increasing Cancellation Justifiable?

The conjugal visit initiative cancellation, despite promising results, was reportedly tied around public opinion. Around the ’90s, increasing pressure mounted against the practice.

One of the arguments was that convicts are sent to jail as a punishment, not for pleasure. They fail to understand that certain convictions – such as convictions for violent crimes – do not qualify for conjugal visit programs.

The anti-conjugal visit campaigners claim the practice encouraged an increase in babies fathered by inmates. There are, however, no data to substantiate such claims. Besides, inmates are usually given free contraceptives during the family visits.

Another widely touted justification, which seems the strongest, is the high running cost. Until New Mexico recently scraped the conjugal visit scheme, they had spent an average of approximately $120,000 annually. While this may sound like a lot, what then can we say of the approximately $35,540 spent annually on each inmate in federal facilities?

If the total cost of running the state’s conjugal visit program was but equivalent to the cost of keeping three inmates behind bars, then, perhaps, the scrap had some political undertones, not entirely running cost, as purported.

Besides, an old study on the population of New York’s inmates postulates that prisoners who kept ties with loved ones were about 70 percent less likely – compared to their counterparts who had no such privilege – to become repeat offenders within three years after release.

Conjugal Visit State-by-State Rules

The activities surrounding conjugal visits are widely similar across jurisdictions. That said, the different states have individual requirements for family visitation:

California: If you’re visiting a loved one in a correctional facility in California, among other rules , be ready for a once-in-four-hours search.

Connecticut : To qualify, prisoners must not be below level 4 in close custody. Close custody levels – usually on a 1-to-5 scale – measures the extent to which correctional officers monitor inmates’ day-to-day activities.

Also, inmates should not be on restriction, must not be a gang member, and must have no records of disciplinary offenses in Classes A or B in the past year. Besides, spouse-only visits are prohibited; an eligible member of the family must be involved.

New York : Unlike Connecticut and Washington, New York’s conjugal visit rules –  as with California’s – allow same-sex partners, however, not without marriage proof.

Washington : Washington is comparatively strict about her conjugal visit requirements . It enlists several crimes as basis for disqualifying inmates from enjoying such privileges. Besides, inmates must proof active involvement in a reintegration/rehabilitation scheme and must have served a minimum time, among others, to qualify. 

However, the rule allows joint visits, where two relatives are in the same facility. Visit duration varies widely – between six hours to three days. The prison supervisor calls the shots on a case-to-case basis.

As with inmates, their visitors also have their share of eligibility requirements to satisfy for an extended family visit. For instance, visitors with pending criminal records may not qualify.

As complicated as the requirements seem, it can even get a bit more complex. For instance, there is usually a great deal of paperwork, background checks, and close supervision. Understandably, these are but to guide against anything implicating. Touchingly, the prisoners’ quests are simple. They only want to reconnect with those who give them happiness, love, and, importantly, hope for a good life outside the bars.

conjugal visit

Conjugal Visits: A Typical Experience

Perhaps you’ve watched pretty similar practices in movies. But it’s entirely a different ball game in the real world. Besides that movies make the romantic visits seem like a trend presently, those in-prison sex scenes are not exactly what it is in reality.

How, then, does it work there? As mentioned, jurisdictions that still allow “extended family visits” may not grant the same to the following:

  • Persons with questionable “prison behavior”
  • Sex crime-related convicts
  • Domestic violence convicts
  • Convicts with a life sentence

Depending on the state, the visit duration lasts from one hour to up to 72 hours. Such visits can happen as frequently as once monthly, once a couple of months, or once in a year. The ‘meetings’ happen in small apartments, trailers, and related facilities designed specifically for the program.

In Connecticut, for example, the MacDougall-Walker correctional facility features structures designed to mimic typical home designs. For instance, the apartments each feature a living room with games, television, and DVD player. Over at Washington, only G-rated videos, that’s one considered suitable for general viewers, are allowed for family view in the conjugal facilities.

The kitchens are usually in good shape, and they permit both fresh and pre-cooked items. During an extended family visit in California, prisoners and their visitors are inspected at four-hour intervals, both night and day, till the visit ends.

Before the program was scrapped in New Mexico, correctional institutions filed-in inmates, and their visitors went through a thorough search. Following a stripped search, inmates were compelled to take a urine drug/alcohol test.

Better Understanding Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits are designed to keep family ties.

New York’s term for the scheme – Family Reunion Program (FRP) – seems to explain its purpose better. For emphasis, the “R” means reunion, not reproduction, as the movies make it seem.

While sexual activities may be partly allowed, it’s primarily meant to bring a semblance of a typical family setting to inmates. Besides reunion, such schemes are designed to act as incentives to encourage inmates to be on their best behavior and comply with prison regulations.

Don’t Expect So Much Comf ort

As mentioned, an extended family visit happens in specially constructed cabins, trailers, or apartments. Too often, these spaces are half-occupied with supplies like soap, linens, condoms, etc. Such accommodations usually feature two bedrooms and a living room with basic games. While these provisions try to mimic a typical home, you shouldn’t expect so much comfort, and of course, remember your cell room is just across your entrance door.

Inmates Are Strip-Searched

Typically, prisoners are stripped in and out and often tested for drugs . In New York, for example, inmates who come out dirty on alcohol and drug tests get banned from the conjugal visit scheme for a year. While visitors are not stripped, they go through a metal detector.

Inmates Do Not Have All-time Privacy

The prison personnel carries out routine checks, during which everyone in the room comes out for count and search. Again, the officer may obstruct the visit when they need to administer medications as necessary.

Conjugal Visits FAQ

Are conjugal visits allowed in the federal prison system?

No, currently, extended family visits are recognized in only four states across the United States –  Washington, New York, Connecticut, and California.

What are the eligibility criteria?

First, conjugal visits are only allowed in a medium or lesser-security correctional facility. While each state has unique rules, commonly, inmates apply for such visits. Prisoners with recent records of reoccurring infractions like swearing and fighting may be ineligible.

To qualify, inmates must undergo and pass screenings, as deemed appropriate by the prison authority. Again, for instance, California rules say only legally married prisoners’ requests are granted.

Are gay partners allowed for conjugal visits?

Yes, but it varies across states. California and New York allow same-sex partners on conjugal visits. However, couples must have proof of legal marriage.

Are conjugal visits only done in the US?

No, although the practice began in the US, Mississippi precisely, other countries have adopted similar practices. Saudi Arabia, Brazil, Venezuela, Colombia, and Canada, for example, are more lenient about extended family visits.

Brazil and Venezuela’s prison facilities, for example, allow weekly ‘rendezvous.’ In Columbia, such ‘visits’ are a routine, where as many as 3,500 women troop in weekly for intimacy with their spouses. However, Northern Ireland and Britain are entirely against any form of conjugal programs. Although Germany allows extended family visits, the protocols became unbearably tight after an inmate killed his supposed spouse during one of such visits in 2010.

conjugal visit

Benefits of Conjugal Visits

Once a normal aspect of the prison system, conjugal visits and the moments that prisoners have with their families are now an indulgence to only a few prisoners in the system. Many prison officials cite huge costs and no indications of reduced recidivism rates among reasons for its prohibition.

Documentations , on the other hand, say conjugal visits dramatically curb recidivism and sexual assaults in prisons. As mentioned earlier, only four states allow conjugal visits. However, research shows that these social calls could prove beneficial to correctional services.

A review by social scientists at the Florida International University in 2012 concludes that conjugal visits have several advantages. One of such reveals that prisons that allowed conjugal visits had lower rape cases and sexual assaults than those where conjugal visits were proscribed. They deduced that sex crime in the prison system is a means of sexual gratification and not a crime of power. To reduce these offenses, they advocated for conjugal visitation across state systems.

Secondly, they determined that these visits serve as a means of continuity for couples with a spouse is in prison. Conjugal visits can strengthen family ties and improve marriage functionality since it helps to maintain the intimacy between husband and wife.

Also, it helps to induce positive attitudes in the inmates, aid the rehabilitation process, and enable the prisoner to function appropriately when reintroduced back to society. Similarly, they add that since it encourages the one-person-one partner practice, it’ll help decrease the spread of HIV. These FIU researchers recommend that more states should allow conjugal visits.

Another study by Yale students in 2012 corroborated the findings of the FIU researchers, and the research suggests that conjugal visits decrease sexual violence in prisons and induces ethical conduct in inmates who desire to spend time with their families.

Expectedly, those allowed to enjoy extended family visits are a lot happier. Besides, they tend to maintain the best behaviors within the facility so that they don’t ruin their chances of the next meeting.

Also, according to experts, visitations can drop the rate of repeat prisoners, thus making the prison system cost-effective for state administrators. An academic with the UCLA explained that if prisoners continue to keep in touch with their families, they live daily with the knowledge that life exists outside the prison walls, and they can look forward to it. Therefore, these family ties keep them in line with society’s laws. It can be viewed as a law-breaking deterrence initiative.

For emphasis, conjugal visits, better termed extended family visits, are more than for sex, as it seems. It’s about maintaining family ties, primarily. The fact is, away from the movies, spouse-alone visits are surprisingly low, if at all allowed by most states’ regulations. Extended family visits create healthy relationships between prisoners and the world outside the bars. It builds a healthy start-point for an effective reentry process, helping inmates feel hope for a good life outside jail .

Harassment and Cyberbullying as Crimes

What is a bench trial jury trial vs. bench trial, related articles.

prison have conjugal visits

History of the Freedom of Information Act

prison have conjugal visits

Ineffective Assistance of Counsel

prison have conjugal visits

Tort Law Definition & Examples

prison have conjugal visits

Bail vs Bond: What’s the Difference?

prison have conjugal visits

See No Evil

prison have conjugal visits

This true-crime series reveals how surveillance cameras solve murders.

Watch Free Series

On the case with paula zahn, bride killa, i married a mobster, deadline: crime with tamron hall, homicide hunter: lt. joe kenda, til death do us part, jared from subway: catching a monster, the hillside strangler: mind of a monster, twisted sisters, the playboy murders, unusual suspects, trending on id, evil lives here, signs of a psychopath, murder under the friday night lights, fear thy neighbor, continue watching, love gone wrong, primal instinct, who the (bleep) did i marry, scorned: love kills, sex & murder, new episodes.

S3 E8 Final Whistle

S12 E8 Too Much Video

S8 E1 Race Against Time

S2 E5 Falling Star

Death By Fame

S2 E6 Day in Court

S7 E1 I’m Not Your Typical Murderer

S15 E2 Terror in the Wilderness

S3 E7 Breaking Bonds

S12 E7 The Big Guy

Real Time Crime

S2 E10 Trigger Warning

My Episodes

Link your tv provider to unlock thousands of episodes from the discovery family of networks..

Network availability may vary with your TV package.

Company Logo

Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information

For california, colorado, connecticut, virginia and utah residents only, allow sale, sharing or use of my personal information for targeted advertising.

If you switch this toggle to “no,” we will not sell or share your personal information with third parties for advertising targeted to this browser/device. Please see our Opt-Out Form for additional preferences.

Global Privacy Control (GPC)

When a GPC signal is not detected, we sell and share your personal information unless you toggle "no" above.

Cookie List

AnyLaw Logo

The Process and Regulations for Conducting Conjugal Visits in State Prisons 

Conjugal. What a weird word. It means relating to marriage or a married couple. So, a conjugal visit is a visit between married people. Regular married couples have conjugal visits every day, but what about when one person in the marriage is in prison? Are they allowed to spend quality time with their spouses? This article will discuss what is known as conjugal visits, the rules surrounding them, how to schedule one, and more.

What is a Conjugal Visit?

When one member of a couple is serving time in prison, they may be allowed to spend some time alone with their spouse. This visit is called a conjugal visit. Being apart can put a lot of strain on a relationship. A conjugal visit allows the couple to spend time together; in some cases, they can hug, kiss, or even have a sexy time. It’s not a free for all, though. There are certain things that have to happen before the visit. And there are rules that have to be followed during the visit.

There has been a lot of talk surrounding these visits for a while in the US. When one spouse is incarcerated, conjugal visits can be a great way to maintain their marriage. A lot of people think these visits also minimize the chances that the prisoner will commit more crimes after they’re released. The visits help them keep a connection to the outside world, aiding in the rehabilitation process. But not everyone agrees. Many people think these programs should be eliminated entirely. They think they are too expensive and pose a security threat. As we dive deeper into conjugal visits, consider your stance on them.

Which States Allow Conjugal Visits?

In 1993, 17 states allowed conjugal visits. But that number has gone down. A lot. There are not many states left that allow conjugal visits. Currently, only four states allow them. As stated here , the states that allow conjugal visits are:

Connecticut

Even in states where conjugal visits are allowed, not all prisons offer them. Prisoners must meet specific criteria before participating in a conjugal visit program. There are also rules that vary by the state and the prison itself. It’s good to check with the specific prison administration to get the most accurate information before scheduling a conjugal visit.

Who is Eligible for a Conjugal Visit?

Since conjugal is related to marriage, it makes sense that conjugal visits are usually reserved for married couples. Inmates must have a history of good behavior and have served a specific part of their sentence. They can’t just schedule a conjugal visit on day one. People in maximum security or who have committed more serious or violent crimes aren’t usually allowed to participate. There are a few things that must be done before the visit. First, the inmate’s spouse must apply for the visit. Then, the prison administration has to approve the application. But that’s not all. The couple may have to undergo a background check and health screening. People can’t just reserve these visits like they would a romantic vacation. There are strict processes and rules in place.

Where Do Conjugal Visits Take Place?

A prison may not be the most romantic place, but they try to make the space for conjugal visits as private and comfortable as possible. Conjugal visits usually happen in a separate, designated building on the prison property. These areas are designed for comfort and privacy as the couple spends quality time together. While the setup is different for each prison, generally, the space has a bed or cot, a seating area, and a bathroom. If the couple is lucky, there may be a kitchen or other amenities they can use. Of course, the area is monitored by correctional officers, so it isn’t completely private. And those officers are there to make sure rules and regulations are followed. If not, the couple’s time may be cut short.

What is the Process for a Conjugal Visit?

We touched on this briefly already, but here is more information. First, the inmate’s spouse applies to the prison administration. If the application is approved, they can move on to the next step: the background check and health screening. This ensures the couple doesn’t pose a danger to each other. In some states, there may be additional steps before the visit. It’s always best to check with your individual prison system to see what they require.

Once the couple has completed everything, they can schedule their visit. On the day of the visit, the couple can meet in the designated conjugal visit area to spend time together. They may be able to touch, hug, and kiss. In some states, they can even have sex. Usually, rules about dress code, behavior, and other aspects of the visit must be followed. These vary by prison, though, so again, check with your prison system to see what’s allowed.

How Often Can a Prisoner Schedule a Conjugal Visit?

While most married couples spend every night together, they lose that privilege when one person is in prison. So, how often can a prisoner schedule a visit with their spouse? In California, inmates can schedule a conjugal visit once every three months. Other states limit the frequency of visits. Sometimes, inmates can only have one or two conjugal visits per year. Inmates may also have to join a long waiting list before scheduling a visit. Also, if inmates break the rules regarding conjugal visits, they can be suspended from the program or have their visitation privileges removed entirely.

Can Same-Sex Couples Participate in Conjugal Visits?

People of all types commit crimes and find themselves in prison. So you may wonder what happens when a member of a same-sex couple is behind bars. Do they get to spend time with their spouses? Well, it depends on the state. Of the four states that allow conjugal visits, only New York and California allow same-sex conjugal visits. Most of the visits are conducted the same way as with opposite-sex couples. Depending on the prison, there may be different protocols surrounding it. Also, it’s important to realize that not all New York and California prisons allow same-sex visits. Some don’t allow conjugal visits at all.

Do Prisoners Have to Pay for Conjugal Visits?

Conjugal visits require a designated space and additional staffing, so costs are involved. Some prisons make inmates pay for their conjugal visits to help with these costs. The fee could be as little as a few dollars but can be more. In other cases, the inmates don’t have to pay anything. In states and prisons that make them pay, there may be programs and grants for which inmates can apply to help cover the cost.

History of Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits started back in the 20th century in the United States. The very first conjugal visit (at least the first documented) was in Mississippi in 1918. These visits were initially designed to help maintain family ties. They also helped reduce sexual tensions in prison. After Mississippi started a program, other states followed. By the 1960s, conjugal visits were pretty common in state prisons across the US. But then the backlash came. The 80s and 90s came, and people started arguing that spending time with your spouse is a privilege, not a right. They also thought the programs were too expensive. Many were scared they posed security threats. For various reasons, the popularity of conjugal visits quickly declined. In 1993, 17 states allowed these visits, but today, there are only four. What a difference! We will see what the future holds for these visits. Will they survive?

Do Other Countries Allow Conjugal Visits?

The short answer is yes. Other countries do have conjugal visits. Conjugal visits are actually more common in other countries than they are here in the US. Canada, Mexico, Spain, Brazil, and South America are some countries that allow conjugal visits. Like in the US, conjugal visits in other countries aim to help couples stay close. And it also allows the inmate to keep one foot in the outside world. Of course, there are still rules and regulations the inmates must follow to be able to spend time with their loved ones. Conjugal visits to the US and other countries are a privilege. The inmate must maintain good behavior or say goodbye to their special time with their spouse.

Conjugal visits can be beneficial to inmates. They allow them to stay connected to their spouse. Prison can be a lonely place, so having that connection is so important. But because of the long and complicated history, conjugal visits are becoming a thing of the past. The backlash from society saying the programs are expensive or dangerous caused a massive decline in the program. Only California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington still allow prisoners conjugal visits. And not all prisons in those states have them. Despite the backlash, many people still believe keeping prisoners connected to their loved ones can lessen the chance that they end up in prison in the future. Conjugal visits can play a role in helping inmates successfully reenter society after their release, which can be difficult for many prisoners. It adds a sense of normalcy to their prison routine and gives them quality time with their loved ones. If you are interested in learning more about conjugal visits in your state, your best bet is to reach out to individual prison administrations to see what their specific rules are since they can be different everywhere.

Vista DUI Lawyer and Criminal Attorney Peter M. Liss

  • Vista DUI Attorney
  • DMV Hearings
  • DUI Defenses
  • Domestic Violence
  • Sex Crime Defense
  • Child Molestation
  • Child Pornography
  • Hit and Run Accident
  • No-License Driving
  • Reckless Driving
  • Juvenile Crime
  • The Three Strikes Law
  • Weapons Charges
  • Theft Defense
  • Fraud Charges
  • Drug Offenses
  • San Diego Office
  • The Criminal Process
  • Criminal Defense FAQ
  • Hiring a Criminal Lawyer
  • Vista Criminal Law Blog
  • Contact Us 24/7

Conjugal Visits Are Real and They’re Great for Society

May 28, 2021 Written by Jill Harness and Edited by Peter Liss

conjugal visits in california prisons

Conjugal visits are regularly referenced in movies and TV shows but they almost seem unreal. After all, why should people serving time for crimes be allowed to have sex when they’re supposed to be punished? But that’s one of the big misconceptions about what the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation calls “Family Visits.” The official name isn’t just bureaucratic code for conjugal visits -the real reason the state allows these visits is to provide inmates to stay close to their families. And studies show this kind of visitation program has some profound benefits.

How did Conjugal Visits Get Started?

Conjugal visits were originally introduced in Mississippi state in the early 1900s. At the time, inmates were essentially just used as slaves, even physically beaten if they broke the rules or failed to work hard enough. To provide positive encouragement for those who worked hard and followed the rules, the prison brought prostitutes for the best inmates every Sunday. Eventually, the prison started allowing prisoners’ wives and girlfriends to visit as well.

The idea eventually caught on, and over the years, many other states adopted the idea of letting wives spend time with their inmate husbands, with over 1/3 of states in the United States eventually enacting some type of conjugal visit program. Unfortunately, with the push to “get tough on crime” that took place in the 90s, many states got rid of these types of programs, which were seen as “being soft on crime” by giving prisoners “sex visits” when they should be being punished. Nowadays, the only four states that offer conjugal visits are California, Connecticut, New York and Washington.

What is a Conjugal Visit?

A conjugal visit is where an inmate gets to see their family with some slight level of privacy and intimacy. One of the big misconceptions about these visits is that they are purely designed to allow prisoners to have sex. While that may be how the program started and may be part of the experience for married couples, the true purpose of the visits is to allow prisoners the opportunity to spend time with their families. Notably, in New York, where inmates are allowed to visit with extended family members, only 48% of these meetings were with a spouse.

Even when the visit is with a spouse, most inmates say that while the chance to have sex with their partners was nice, the family visit was more about being intimate with the person they love for anywhere from 30 to 40 hours. Considering that standard prison visits require all conversations be monitored by guards, and partners are only permitted to kiss at the start and end of the visit, the chance to have private discussions for 24 hours and spend the night in bed together is a welcome change.

How do the Visits Work?

Inmates who qualify for family visits can spend up to 40 hours in an apartment located on prison grounds with their spouses, domestic partners, or other immediate family members, including children, siblings or parents. These apartments are equipped with toiletries, sheets and condoms.

Prisoners are allowed no more than four visits per year. Unfortunately, because of the program’s popularity and the limited number of prison apartment spaces, it’s more likely prisoners will only be able to participate twice a year.

Not all prisoners are eligible for the program. Anyone on death row, who is serving a life sentence, or who was convicted of a sex offense is ineligible. Additionally, inmates must have a record of good behavior, and anyone on disciplinary restrictions cannot participate. Those eligible must apply through their correctional counselor.

Visiting family members will not be strip-searched, though the prisoner will. While the visit is mostly unsupervised, the area will be searched as often as every four hours.

Visitors must follow many rules , including what they wear. For example, no one can wear blue jeans, and women cannot wear short dresses, short skirts, strapless tops or form-fitting clothing.

Why do States Allow for Family Visits?

There are many benefits, but the biggest one is a dramatic reduction in recidivism rates . One study in New Mexico (which recently discontinued conjugal visits) showed that prisoners who participated in extended family visits had 70% less chance of ending up in prison than those who did not participate.

Family visits are, therefore, more effective than education in keeping former felons out of prison. The effectiveness of these programs makes sense, considering they help maintain relationships between inmates and their loved ones. These relationships are critical in helping convicts readjust to life outside prison after release.

Though many people consider these programs to be a waste of taxpayer money, it’s been shown that every $1 spent on education in prisons saves taxpayers $5 annually due to the reduced cost of housing prisoners. Given that visits with family members cost less and are even more effective at reducing crime rates, maintaining these programs seems to be a no-brainer.

Reducing recidivism rates is not the only benefit of conjugal visits. By encouraging prisoners to be good to earn time with their loved ones, prisons can reduce violence and dangers to other inmates and guards -which could further reduce the tax rates associated with incarceration. More savings can be realized as well, because the more prisoners are model citizens, the more likely they are to be eligible for early release programs, where they can enjoy a complete family reunion outside of the prison.

There is also evidence that conjugal visits reduce prison rape . One study found that sexual violence in prison occurred at a rate of 226 per 100,000 prisoners in states without these programs while occurring at a rate of 57 per 100.000 prisoners in states with family visits.

Conjugal Visits During Covid-19

Unsurprisingly, these programs were temporarily discontinued as a result of the ongoing pandemic, but they have since been reinstated. To participate in visits , all guests over 2 must be vaccinated or show proof of a negative covid test taken within 72 and 96 hours of the visit. Following the visit, inmates must take a covid test within 72 and 96 hours. Those who test positive, are unvaccinated, or refuse to take the test will be placed in quarantine after the visit.

Alternative Sentences are Still Preferable

Of course, being allowed to continue living with your family is better than any conjugal visit. Maintaining your family life is possible if you prove your innocence or are given an alternative sentence  such as probation. Your choice of criminal lawyer makes such a drastic difference in the outcome of your case. If you have been accused of any crime, please call (760) 643-4050 to schedule a free initial consultation with Peter M. Liss.

  • DUI / Felony DUI
  • Driving Offenses
  • White Collar Crimes
  • Violent Crimes
  • Sex Offenses
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of Use

Attorney Peter M. Liss, (760) 643-4050 380 S Melrose Drive #301 Vista, CA 92081

vista crimminal law logo

Copyright 2003, 2021 Peter M. Liss, Esq. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

About the Legal Information on This Website

I rely on my experience as a top defense lawyer in my area to personally review all information on this site; however the information offered here should not substitute as legal advice. If you have been arrested or charged with a crime in Vista, please contact a qualified defense attorney.

Conjugal Visits

Why they’re disappearing, which states still use them, and what really happens during those overnight visits..

Although conjugal, or “extended,” visits play a huge role in prison lore, in reality, very few inmates have access to them. Twenty years ago, 17 states offered these programs. Today, just four do: California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington. No federal prison offers extended, private visitation.

Last April, New Mexico became the latest state to cancel conjugal visits for prisoners after a local television station revealed that a convicted killer, Michael Guzman, had fathered four children with several different wives while in prison. Mississippi had made a similar decision in January 2014.

A Stay at the “Boneyard”

In every state that offers extended visits, good prison behavior is a prerequisite, and inmates convicted of sex crimes or domestic violence, or who have life sentences, are typically excluded.

The visits range from one hour to three days, and happen as often as once per month. They take place in trailers, small apartments, or “family cottages” built just for this purpose, and are sometimes referred to as “ boneyards .” At the MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Connecticut, units are set up to imitate homes. Each apartment has two bedrooms, a dining room, and a living room with a TV, DVD player, playing cards, a Jenga game, and dominoes. In Washington, any DVD a family watches must be G-rated. Kitchens are typically fully functional, and visitors can bring in fresh ingredients or cooked food from the outside.

In California, inmates and their visitors must line up for inspection every four hours throughout the weekend visit, even in the middle of the night. Many prisons provide condoms for free. In New Mexico, before the extended visitation program was canceled, the prisoner’s spouse could be informed if the inmate had tested positive for a sexually transmitted infection. After the visit, both inmates and visitors are searched, and inmates typically have their urine tested to check for drugs or alcohol, which are strictly prohibited.

What Everyone Gets Wrong

Conjugal visits are not just about sex. In fact, they are officially called “family visits,” and kids are allowed to stay overnight, too. In Connecticut, a spouse or partner can’t come alone: the child of the inmate must be present. In Washington, two related inmates at the same facility, such as siblings or a father and son, are allowed to arrange a joint visit with family members from the outside. Only about a third of extended visits in the state take place between spouses alone.

The Insider’s Perspective

Serena L. was an inmate at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York from 1999 to 2002. During that time, she qualified for just one overnight trailer visit. Her 15-year-old sister, who lived on Long Island, persuaded a friend to drive her to the prison. “I remember her coming through the gate, carrying two big bags of food, and she said, ‘I got your favorite: Oreos!’ ” Serena says. “It was like a little slumber party for us. When I was first incarcerated, we had tried to write to each other and talk to each other by phone, but there was lots we weren’t really emotionally able to come to terms with until we had that private space, without a CO watching, to do it.”

The (Checkered) History

Conjugal visits began around 1918 at Parchman Farm, a labor camp in Mississippi. At first, the visits were for black prisoners only, and the visitors were local prostitutes, who arrived on Sundays and were paid to service both married and single inmates. According to historian David Oshinsky, Jim Crow-era prison officials believed African-American men had stronger sex drives than whites, and would not work as hard in the cotton fields if they were not sexually sated. The program expanded in the 1940s to include white, male inmates and their wives, and in the 1970s to include female inmates.

Has your partner been in prison? Help others understand what the experience is like by filling out our questionnaire.

This is not a paywall.

We’ll never put our work behind a paywall, and we’ll never put a limit on the number of articles you can read. Our ability to take on big, groundbreaking investigations — the kind that can lead to real impact — doesn’t depend on advertisers or corporate owners. It depends on people like you. Our independence is our strength, and your donation makes us stronger.

Stay up to date on our reporting and analysis.

Official websites use .gov

A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS

A lock ( Lock A locked padlock ) or https:// means you've safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Federal Bureau of Prisons

General visiting information.

Make sure your visit will be a success by carefully following these four steps.

Discover or confirm the whereabouts of the inmate you would like to visit.

Before you can visit you must be placed on the inmate's approved visiting list.

Review all visiting rules, regulations, and procedures before your visit.

Find out when you can visit and get directions to the facility.

Locate the inmate

Sometimes an inmate may be moved to a different facility so that they can benefit from unique programs offered at that location. They might also be moved to receive treatment for a medical condition or for security concerns. Therefore, the first step in planning your visit should be to determine where the inmate is currently housed.

Please verify you are a human by entering the words you see in the textbox below.

To visit, you must be pre-approved.

You can only visit an inmate if they have placed you on their visiting list and you have been cleared by the BOP.

  • An inmate is given a Visitor Information Form when he/she arrives at a new facility.
  • Inmate completes their portion of the form and mails a copy to each potential visitor.
  • Potential visitor completes all remaining form fields.
  • Potential visitor sends the completed form back to the inmate's address (listed on the form).
  • We may request more background information and possibly contact other law enforcement agencies or the NCIC
  • The inmate is told when a person is not approved to visit and it is the inmate's responsibility to notify that person.

Who can an inmate add to their visiting list?

  • Step-parent(s)
  • Foster parent(s)
  • Grandparents
  • No more than 10 friends/associates
  • Foreign officials
  • Members of religious groups including clergy
  • Members of civic groups
  • Employers (former or prospective)
  • Parole advisors

In certain circumstances such as when an inmate first enters prison or is transferred to a new prison, a visiting list might not exist yet. In this case, immediate family members who can be verified by the information contained in the inmate's Pre-Sentence Report, may be allowed to visit. However, if there is little or no information available about a person, visiting may be denied. You should always call the prison ahead of time to ensure your visit will be permitted.

Be Prepared

You should be familiar with all visiting rules, regulations, and procedures before your visit.

The following clothing items are generally not permitted but please consult the visiting policy for the specific facility as to what attire and items are permitted in the visiting room:

  • revealing shorts
  • halter tops
  • bathing suits
  • see-through garments of any type
  • low-cut blouses or dresses
  • backless tops
  • hats or caps
  • sleeveless garments
  • skirts two inches or more above the knee
  • dresses or skirts with a high-cut split in the back, front, or side
  • clothing that looks like inmate clothing (khaki or green military-type clothing)

Plan your trip

  • the prison location
  • the prison type
  • inmate visiting needs
  • availability of visiting space

The inmate you plan to visit should tell you what the visiting schedule is for that prison; however, if you have any questions please contact that particular facility .

General Visiting Hours

Camp general visiting hours, fsl general visiting hours.

prison have conjugal visits

Controversy and Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits were first allowed as incentives for the forced labor of incarcerated Black men, the practice expanding from there. Is human touch a right?

An illustration of a bedroom with a prison guard tower through the window

“The words ‘conjugal visit’ seem to have a dirty ring to them for a lot of people,” a man named John Stefanisko wrote for The Bridge, a quarterly at the Connecticut Correctional Institution at Somers, in December 1963 . This observation marked the beginning of a long campaign—far longer, perhaps, than the men at Somers could have anticipated—for conjugal visits in the state of Connecticut, a policy that would grant many incarcerated men the privilege of having sex with their wives. Conjugal visits, the editors of The Bridge wrote, are “a controversial issue, now quite in the spotlight,” thanks to their implementation at Parchman Farm in Mississippi in 1965. But the urgency of the mens’ plea, as chronicled in The Bridge and the Somers Weekly Scene , gives voice to the depth of their deprivation. “Perhaps we’re whistling in the wind,” they wrote, “but if the truth hits home to only a few, we’ll be satisfied.”

JSTOR Daily Membership Ad

The men at Somers wrote of conjugal visits as something new, but in fact, Parchman had adopted some version of the practice as early as 1918. Parchman, then a lucrative penal plantation , sought to incentivize Black prisoners, who picked and hoed cotton under the surveillance of armed white guards, by allowing them to bring women into their camp. The visits were unofficial, and stories from the decades that followed are varied, ranging from trysts between married couples to tales of sex workers, bussed in on weekends. The men built structures for these visits out of scrap lumber painted red, and the term “ red houses ” remained in use long after the original structures were gone. The policy was mostly limited to Black prisoners because white administrators believed that Black men had stronger sexual urges then white men, and could be made more pliable when those urges were satisfied.

This history set a precedent for conjugal visits as a policy of social control, shaped by prevailing ideas about race, sexual orientation, and gender. Prisoners embraced conjugal visits, and sometimes, the political reasonings behind them, but the writings of the men at Somers suggest a greater longing. Their desire for intimacy, privacy and, most basic of all, touch, reveals the profound lack of human contact in prison, including but also greater than sex itself.

Scholar Elizabeth Harvey paraphrases Aristotle, who described the flesh as the “medium of the tangible,” establishing one’s “sentient border with the world.” Touch is unique among the senses in that it is “dispersed throughout the body” and allows us to experience many sensations at once. Through touch we understand that we are alive. To touch an object is to know that we are separate from that object, but in touching another person, we are able to “form and express bonds” with one another. In this context, Harvey cites the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, who described all touch as an exchange. “To touch is also always to be touched,” she writes.

An illustration from Volume 3, Issue 4 of The Bridge, 1963

When Parchman officially sanctioned conjugal visits in 1965 after the policy was unofficially in place for years, administrators saw it as an incentive for obedience, but also a solution to what was sometimes called the “ Sex Problem ,” a euphemism for prison rape . Criminologists of the era viewed rape in prison as a symptom of the larger “ problem of homosexuality ,” arguing that the physical deprivations of prison turned men into sexual deviants—i.e., men who wanted to have sex with other men. In this context, conjugal visits were meant to remind men of their natural roles, not merely as practitioners of “ normal sexuality ,” but as husbands. (Framing prison rape as a problem of ‘homosexuals’ was commonplace until Wilbert Rideau’s Angolite exposé Prison: The Sexual Jungle revealed the predation for what it was in 1979.)

Officials at Parchman, the sociologist Columbus B. Hopper wrote in 1962 , “consistently praise the conjugal visit as a highly important factor in reducing homosexuality, boosting inmate morale, and… comprising an important factor in preserving marriages.” Thus making the visits, by definition, conjugal, a word so widely associated with sex and prison that one can forget it simply refers to marriage. Men—and at the time, conjugal visits were only available to men—had to be legally married to be eligible for the program.

But for the men at Somers, the best argument for conjugal visitation was obvious—with one telling detail. The privacy afforded by the red houses at Parchman, Richard Brisson wrote “preserve some dignity to the affair,” creating “a feeling of being a part of a regular community rather than … participating in something that could be made to appear unclean.” For lovers secluded in bedrooms, “[t]here is no one about to mock them or to embarrass them,” he wrote. This observation suggests the ubiquity of surveillance in prison, as well as its character.

Carceral institutions are intended to operate at a bureaucratic remove; prisoners are referred to by number and were counted as “ bodies .” Guards must act as ambivalent custodians of these bodies, even when the nature of their job can be quite intimate. Prisoners are routinely strip-searched and frisked; they must ask permission to exercise any movement, to perform any bodily function. This is as true today as it was in Somers, where men frequently complained that they were treated like children. “You are constantly supervised, just as if you were a one-year-old child,” Ray Bosworth wrote in 1970 .

But guards are not parents, and the tension between dutiful ambivalence and intimate supervision often manifests as disgust. On a recent visit to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, a maximum-security women’s prison in upstate New York, prisoners complained of being ridiculed during strip searches, and hearing guards discussing their bodies in the corridors.

Sad young woman and her husband sitting in prison visiting room.

This attitude extends to rules regulating touch between prisoners and visitors. Writing about San Quentin State Prison in California in the early 2000s, the ethnographer Megan L. Comfort described a common hierarchy of visits , each with its own allowable “degree of bodily contact.” Death Row cage visits allowed for hugs in greeting and parting, while a contact visit allowed for a hug and a kiss. The nature of the kiss, however, was subject to the discretion of individual guards. “We are allowed to kiss members of our families, hello and goodbye, but the amount of affection we may show is limited by the guard,” James Abney wrote for the Somers Weekly Scene in 1971.  “If he feels, for instance that a man is kissing his wife too much or too passionately, then he may be reprimanded for it or the visit may be ended on the spot.”

When Somers held its first “ Operation Dialogue ,” a “mediated discussion” among prisoners and staff in May 1971, conjugal visits were a primary concern. By then, California (under Governor Ronald Reagan) had embraced the policy—why hadn’t Connecticut? Administrators argued that furloughs, the practice of allowing prisoners to go home for up to several days, were a preferable alternative. This certainly would seem to be the case. In August 1971, the Scene quoted Connecticut Correction Commissioner John R. Manson, who criticized the skeezy, “tar-paper shacks” at Parchman, concluding that furloughs were “ a less artificial way for inmates to maintain ties with their families .” But to be eligible for furloughs, men were required to be within three or four months of completing their sentence. In the wake of George H.W. Bush’s infamous “ Willie Horton ” campaign ad in 1988, a racially-charged ad meant to stoke fear and anti-Black prejudice in which a violent attack was blamed on Liberal soft-on-crime policies (specifically scapegoating Michael Dukakis for a crime committed on a prison furlough that predated his tenure as governor), prison furloughs were mostly abolished. They remain rare today, still looming in the shadow of the Horton ad.

Conjugal visits are considered a rehabilitative program because, as Abney wrote, it is in “society’s best interest to make sure that [a prisoner’s] family remains intact for him to return to.” Unspoken is the disregard for people serving long sentences, or life, making conjugal visits unavailable to those who might need them the most.

The campaign for conjugal visits continued throughout the 1970s. Then, in 1980, in a sudden and “major policy reversal ,” the state of Connecticut announced that it would instate a “conjugal and family visit” program at several prisons, including Somers. Subsequent issues of the Scene outline the myriad rules for application, noting that applicants could be denied for a variety of reasons at the discretion of prison administrators.

The earliest conjugal visits at Somers lasted overnight but were less than 24 hours in total. Men could have multiple visitors, as long as they were members of his immediate family. This change signaled a new emphasis on domesticity over sex. Visits took place in trailers equipped with kitchens, where families cooked their own meals. Describing a similar set-up at San Quentin more than two decades later, Comfort wrote that the trailers were meant to encourage “people to simulate an ordinary living situation rather than fixate on a hurried physical congress.”

By the early 1990s, conjugal visitation, in some form, was official policy in 17 states. But a massive ideological shift in the way society viewed incarcerated people was already underway. In a seminal 1974 study called “What Works?”, sociologist Robert Martinson concluded that rehabilitation programs in prison “ had no appreciable effect on recidivism .” Thinkers on the left saw this as an argument for decarceration—perhaps these programs were ineffective because of the nature of prison itself. Thinkers on the right, and society more broadly, took a different view. As (ironically) the Washington Post observed, the findings were presented in “lengthy stories appearing in major newspapers, news magazines and journals, often under the headline, ‘ Nothing Works! ’”

Martinson’s work gave an air of scientific legitimacy to the growing “tough-on-crime” movement, but the former Freedom Rider, who once spent 40 days at Parchman, spawned punitive policies he couldn’t have predicted. In 1979, Martinson officially recanted his position. He died by suicide the following year.

In Mistretta v. United States (1989), the court ruled that a person’s demonstrated capacity for rehabilitation should not be a factor in federal sentencing guidelines because, they wrote, studies had proved that rehabilitation was “an unattainable goal for most cases.” It effectively enshrined “nothing works” into law.

Weekly Newsletter

Get your fix of JSTOR Daily’s best stories in your inbox each Thursday.

Privacy Policy   Contact Us You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking on the provided link on any marketing message.

“Nothing works” gave rise to harsher sentencing, and more punitive policies in prisons themselves. In 1996, the state of California drastically reduced its conjugal visitation program . At San Quentin, this meant conjugal visits would no longer be available for people serving life sentences. To have benefitted from the program, and then have it taken away, was a particular blow to prisoners and partners alike. One woman told Comfort that she was in “mourning,” saying: “To me, I felt that it was like a death. ”

We don’t know how the men at Somers might have felt about this new era, or the heyday of conjugal visits that came before it. There are no issues of the Weekly Scene available after 1981 in the American Prison Newspapers collection, which is just after the visits began. But their writing, particularly their poetry, offers some insight into the deprivation that spurred their request. In 1968, James N. Teel writes, “Tell me please, do you ever cry, / have you ever tried to live while your insides die? ” While Frank Guiso , in 1970, said his existence was only an “illusion.” “I love and I don’t, / I hate and I don’t / I sing and I don’t / I live and I don’t,” he writes. But for others, disillusionment and loneliness take a specific shape.

“I wish you could always be close to me,” Luis A. Perez wrote in a poem called “ The Wait ” 1974:

I will hold your strong hand in my hand, As I stare in your eyes across the table. Trying to think of the best things to say, I then notice how I will not be able. I will long for your tender embraces, For your long and most desirable kiss. As I sleep cold for warmth of your body, You my love, are the one I will miss…

Today, only four states—California, Connecticut, Washington and New York—allow conjugal visits. (Mississippi, where Parchman is located, ended conjugal visitation in 2014 .) Some argue that Connecticut’s Extended Family Visit (EFV) program, as it is now called, doesn’t actually count , because it requires a prisoner’s child to be there along with another adult . There is also some suggestion that Connecticut’s program, while still officially on the books, has not been operational for some time.

The COVID-19 pandemic gave further cause to limit contact between prisoners and visitors, engendering changes that don’t appear to be going away anytime soon.

Somers was reorganized as a medium-security facility and renamed the Osborn Correctional Institution in 1994. A recent notice on the facility’s visitation website reads: “​​Masks must be worn at all times. A brief embrace will be permitted at the end of the visit .”

Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today.

JSTOR logo

JSTOR is a digital library for scholars, researchers, and students. JSTOR Daily readers can access the original research behind our articles for free on JSTOR.

Get Our Newsletter

More stories.

An illustration of bundling

  • Bundling: An Old Tradition on New Ground

Portrait of James B. Parker

  • Two William McKinley Autopsies

From the cover of the newspaper El Grito del Norte, July 1973

Chicanx Studies: A Foundational Reading List

Total solar eclipse, May 29, 1919, at Sobral, Brazil

Bridging The Gap of War: Einstein’s Eclipse

Recent posts.

  • Why Interstellar Objects Like ʻOumuamua and Borisov May Hold Clues to Exoplanets
  • Land of the Free, Home of the Bootleggers
  • Woodchucks, Silk, and American Divorce

Support JSTOR Daily

Sign up for our weekly newsletter.

9 Arresting Facts About Conjugal Visits

By suzanne raga | sep 6, 2015.

iStock

They're not nearly as common as pop culture might lead you to believe.

1. ONLY FOUR STATES STILL ALLOW CONJUGAL VISITS.

In the United States, conjugal visits occur only in state prisons, not federal prisons. In the early 1990s, 17 states had active conjugal visit programs. As of 2015, though, California, New York, Connecticut, and Washington are the only states that still allow conjugal visits . Two other states that recently had conjugal visit policies in place— Mississippi and New Mexico—stopped allowing the visits as of February 1, 2014 and May 1, 2014, respectively.

2. THE PHRASE "CONJUGAL VISIT" IS ACTUALLY A MISNOMER.

Today, conjugal visits are called extended family visits (or, alternately, family reunion visits). The official reason for these extended family visits is three-fold: to maintain a connection between the prisoner and his family, to reduce recidivism , and to provide an incentive for good behavior. States no longer use the phrase “conjugal visit” to emphasize the program’s inclusion of all family members, rather than just the prisoner’s spouse/partner.

3. LIKE HOTELS, PRISONS THAT FACILITATE EXTENDED FAMILY VISITS PROVIDE TOILETRIES FOR THEIR GUESTS.

In the United States, prisons have special facilities (cabins, trailers, or apartment-style housing) dedicated just to extended family visits. Some prisons provide towels, sheets, toiletries, condoms, and lube to their inmates. Other prisons provide two-bedroom apartments with a living and dining room, DVD player, TV, and games like Jenga and dominoes. Depending on the state and the specific prison’s rules, visitors may be allowed to bring groceries and prepared food to the visit.

4. BOTH PRISONERS & THEIR VISITORS MUST FULFILL CERTAIN REQUIREMENTS TO GET PERMISSION FOR A VISIT.

The specific rules pertaining to extended family visits vary from state to state. Most visits in California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington occur only in minimum to medium security prisons, and inmates must have a record of good behavior and a record of clean health. A spouse who visits their husband/wife inmate must pass a background check, body search, and be registered with the prison’s visitor list.

5. CONJUGAL VISITS ORIGINATED IN MISSISSIPPI NEARLY 100 YEARS AGO.

In 1918, the first conjugal visits occurred at a labor camp called Parchman Farm (also called Mississippi State Penitentiary). The warden, James Parchman, wanted to encourage the African-American male prisoners to work harder, so he paid prostitutes to come and have sex with the inmates each Sunday. In the 1930s, Parchman Farm began letting white male prisoners engage in this program, and female inmates were invited to participate in 1972.

6. PRISONERS IN INDIA HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT, NOT PRIVILEGE, TO BEAR CHILDREN.

In 2015, India’s government passed legislation stating that conjugal visits are a right , not a privilege, for married inmates. These inmates are also entitled, if they wish, to give their sperm to their spouse for artificial insemination. Interestingly, in 2014, prison officials in New Mexico cited the birth of children to fathers who were incarcerated as a big contributing factor (besides economic reasons) to end conjugal visits in the state.

7. PRISONS IN SAUDI ARABIA ARE SURPRISINGLY (ABSURDLY!) LIBERAL, LAX, & GENEROUS.

In Saudi Arabia, male inmates can have one conjugal visit each month. But that rule applies to each spouse, so men with multiple wives can have multiple visits each month! The Saudi government helps inmates’ families with money each month for housing, food, and education, and the government also pays for the travel (airfare and hotel) expenses that inmates’ family members incur to visit the prison. And, if the prisoner wants to attend a family wedding or funeral, he's given up to $2600 to give as a gift . The Washington Post reported that the Saudi government spent $35 million on these prisoner perks in 2014.

8. IN 2010, A GERMAN PRISONER USED HIS UNSUPERVISED CONJUGAL VISIT TO MURDER HIS VISITOR.

In April 2010, a 50-year-old inmate killed his 46-year-old girlfriend during a conjugal visit in a German prison. After sending him letters in prison, she became his girlfriend and participated regularly in six-hour unsupervised visits with him. The inmate, Klaus-Dieter H., had been imprisoned for nearly two decades for the rape and murder of a child. Unfortunately, he stabbed his girlfriend with a steak knife and strangled her during one of those visits. Because this incident came on the heels of a few other instances of slack security at German prisons (including prisoner beatings and escapes), many outraged Germans criticized prison authorities and the justice minister, Roswitha Müller-Piepenkötter. Ultimately, German prisons beefed up security and implemented stricter rules for conjugal visits, increasing the restrictions on which prisoners are allowed to have the visits.

9. BRAZIL'S CONJUGAL VISIT POLICY IS QUITE SEXIST.

In Brazil, both straight and gay male inmates can receive visitors , but female inmates rarely get the privilege of participating in conjugal visits. Unfortunately, discriminatory policies are probably the least of the female inmates’ worries: Brazil’s prison cells are overcrowded, filthy, unsanitary, and dangerous. Women in prison who are pregnant do not have access to medical care, and many female inmates are confined to isolation units without cause.

Dopplr Legal News and Information

How Pain and Suffering is Calculated in Personal I...

prison have conjugal visits

If someone experiences a personal injury due to the negligence or intentional actions of another party, the legal system allows...

Can I File for Divorce If I’m Pregnant?

For some couples, pregnancy can add uncertainty about the future of their relationship. Considering divorce when pregnant is a...

Whistleblower Protections

Whistleblowers play a crucial role in exposing wrongdoing in organizations and government entities. While whistleblowers are...

Copyright © Dopplr Legal News and Information . 2024 • All rights reserved.

  • legal questions
  • 11 Min Read
  • 15th April 2016

Conjugal Visits: Rules and History

dopplr

The phrase is well known in popular culture – conjugal visits means private alone time with a significant other while in prison. We all understand the connotation of conjugal visits, but allow me to spell it out. Yes, inmates are permitted to engage in sexual relations with their spouse during conjugal visits . However, many times these visitations are not used for intimacy at all. A lot of prisoners who earn this right choose to have family members come to see them, in an effort to remain close with those who matter most. In New York, 52 percent of these visits did not involve spouses.

Where Are Conjugal Visits Allowed?

States That Allow Conjugal Visits

States That Allow Conjugal Visits

As recently as 1995, 17 states had conjugal visit programs, although federal prisons never allowed it.

Today, only four states still allow conjugal visits:  California, Connecticut, New York and Washington. 

New Mexico and Mississippi cancelled their programs within the past two years.

How Did the Conjugal Visit Program Start?

Origin of Conjugal Visits

Parchman Farm

The very first prison to allow conjugal visits was  Parchman Farm (now  Mississippi State Penitentiary ).  Parchman farm began as a labor prison camp for black men in Mississippi which was a blatant attempt to keep slavery alive 50 years after the end of the Civil War.

Prison authorities believed that if black men were allowed to have sexual intercourse, they would be more productive. 

They also believed that black men had stronger sex drives. Therefore, every weekend, women would be driven in by the bus load to fraternize with the prisoners. There was no state control or legal status, the visits were simply thought to encourage surviving a six day work week of harsh labor and conditions, not to mention racist guards.

Over the years, conjugal visits evolved to spending more time with family. Even the aforementioned Parchman Farm had cleaned up the act by the 1960s; visits were sanctioned, furlough programs had begun, and cabins were built so inmates could spend time alone with their significant other. The prison would even provide toys for the family.

Following their model, conjugal visit programs saw a steady and fast rise in use. It was touted as a model of rehabilitation after a reporter paid a visit to Parchman Farm and declared it, “the wave of the future.”

Conjugal Visit Rules

Good behavior is an obvious requirement for earning family and conjugal visitation rights, but there’s a bit more to it than that. For the most part, the rules surrounding family visits are the same; they must be in medium security or lower prisons, and they must not have been convicted of sexual assault . However, each state has their own protocol for selecting which inmates have earned the privilege of family visitation:

  • Connecticut : Inmates cannot be level 4 or above in close custody (levels are on a scale of 1-5 and refers to how much they are monitored by guards on a day-to-day basis). They cannot be a member of a gang, be on restrictive status, or class A or class B disciplinary offenses within the past 12 months prior to requesting involvement. The spouse cannot come alone ; other eligible family members must participate.
  • New York : This state and California are the only ones that allow visitation for same-sex couples. Proof of marriage must also exist. Here are the guidelines for New York’s Extended Family Visit Program .
  • California : Inmates and visiting family members are subject to a search every four hours . See: California Extended Family Visit guidelines. 
  • Washington : There are a long list of requirements that inmates and visitors alike must meet before being allowed to participate in the visitation program. There are a slew of disallowed crimes, along with minimum time served, active participation in a reentry program, and housing status rules to qualify. If there are two family members in the same prison, joint visits can be arranged pending approval.

The length of the visit varies from six hours to an entire weekend, which is determined by the supervisor of the prison on a case by case basis. And just as there are eligibility requirements for prisoners, the same can be said for those who wish to visit them. Apart from the verification of the relationship, visitors must also be free of crime.

  • If a family member other than a spouse, such as brother or sister, wishes to visit, it will be scrutinized closely.
  • If a child is participating, a birth certificate showing that the inmate is their biological father is required.
  • If the inmate is a step-father, he must have been present during the child’s formative years (ages 7-12). There must also be consent from the child’s legal guardian.
  • The visitor cannot be on parole, or subject to criminal drug charges.

On top of these requirements is a good deal of paperwork which needs to be filled out. With all of the supervision and background checks, it would be extremely difficult for anything sinister to happen. To inmates and their family, visitation is purely about spending time with the one’s they love. So why are so many states stopping it?

Why Have Visitation Programs Been Discontinued?

As previously stated, there were 17 states with visitation programs 20 short years ago; today there are only four. The reasons for this have varied slightly, one of which being public opinion. People just don’t think criminals should have access to anything, much less time with family members. Some even get upset when they learn inmates have access to health care . Most of these people probably fail to realize that those convicted of violent crimes are not allowed to participate in family visitation programs.

Another reason is claims of contraband being snuck in and babies being conceived during these visits. But no numbers are given to back up these claims, and they appear unfounded at best as a result. The Corrections Commissioner for Mississippi even stated that they provide inmates with contraception during their visits. While there are no numbers to back up these claims, they try to use others to convince everyone that it’s too expensive.

The main reason widely given is budget cuts. That was the fallback for Mississippi and New Mexico when they cancelled their programs. In New Mexico, the program cost $120,000 a year . Their 2016 budget totals $6.2 billion . The cost of keeping the program active amounts to less than one-five hundredth of one percent of the state budget. The median household income in New Mexico is $43,782, which means that, divided evenly amongst the average taxpayer, everyone would only contribute about two cents each to a family visitation program. Yet somehow, the benefits don’t outweigh the cost.

Why Should Visitation Programs Continue?

At a rate of approximately $32,000 per year for each inmate, it’s been well documented how much it costs to keep someone in prison. Overcrowding is also a huge problem, which has many causes. But where family visitation comes into the picture is its documented ability to reduce recidivism, which show that 76 percent of those released from state prisons are arrested again within five years. Initial studies have found that visitation programs are responsible for lowering parole violations by 25 percent , but it could be higher than that according to an older study, which suggests recidivism was decreased by 67 percent because of visitation programs.

Conjugal and family visits also reduce occurrences of sexual violence in prisons by 75 percent .

This is a number too large to ignore, because the snowball effect here is that it also drastically lowers the rate of sexually transmitted diseases between prisoners. Then there is evidence that is hard to quantify. Prison guards have stated that prisoners who have access to visitation are generally happier, and are encouraged to keep up their good behavior in order to keep earning visitation privileges, or perhaps even early release. This is why prisons in the four states that still allow it have changed the name from “conjugal visits” to “family visits.” There is more to it than just intimacy; there is connection that these families are trying to maintain. If the prisoner is able to interact with the person or people for whom he will be responsible upon release, it will only motivate them to work harder to never put them through it again.

Phavy

Lifers in state of California eligible for conjugal visits as well? due gov. Jerry brown recent signed off?

Claudia

To Phavy do we know what disqualifies a lifer from getting conjugal visits besides being a sex offender and/or domestic violence. I have my husband in a state prison in CA and he has been in prison for 20 years but we needed to find out what qualifies him or disqualifies him from getting visits. Please advise, thank you in advance

The program is allowed for those who have a release date. Unfortunately it is not available for inmates serving life sentences.

Janey

If the offender has two non-sexual violent felony strikes in Ca but he has a release date and the visitor was a co defendant on an old case, can the offender get conjugal visits with the visitor if they get married?

Christiane

Very great article! As much as I advocate conjugal visitation, early justifications are shocking to me. I still hope that in future, the trend will go back to the use of extended visits in more than just 4 states. It also does not appear too expensive, particular since some prisons even charge visitors a fee per night.

Saprina

Do lifers get conjugal visits if they are in prison for non violence on woman???

It would depend on where they are sentenced and what exactly the offense is, along with how they have conducted themselves while in prison.

Tina

I pray they go back to the old way,, but with different intentions I have a question my husband was convicted of corporal punishment on a spouse does he qualify for conjugal visit yes he has a release date

Amber

Is there any way a state like FL could reconsider “family visits” I mean my boys miss their father and he was only sentenced 10 years. I was thinking of a petition but I doubt people will view it how you and I do. Just being able to watch a movie together and hang out like we use to would mean so much I can wait for sex but the joy it brings to my boys is much more fulfilling. I mean it’s so backed up in FL they could be making more money if they charged family visits.

Marilyn Wiggins

Marilyn Wiggins

Amber I will sign a petition if it’s started. The sanctity of family is important.

karen lea pollard-mills

karen lea pollard-mills

I WOULD SIGN A PETITION ALSO! LETS START ONE NATIONWIDE! NOT JUST FOR EACH STATE!

Ashley

I believe this would be great. Even if there was a price tag many people would pay it. That would help lower the cost of prisons.

Emily

Does anyone know what prisons in New York allow conjugal visits?

In the post, there is a link to the guidelines for New York’s Extended family visit program. Click it to see all the guidelines and how to apply for them. Good luck.

Leslie L Miller

Leslie L Miller

My husband is serving life without! He was convicted at 19, you know they are taking every form of human contact away from human beings and expecting them to just lay down be good and wither away slowly! Why? My husband is now 37, he is not the same person he was , we have been married 12 years together 15, never consummated our marriage! To some of us it’s a religious right if only one time! Changes need to be made in our system! It’s broken if we don’t rethink alot of things all we are going to create is detached MONSTERS, with no concept of real feelings or emotions!

Suz

I couldn’t agree more! The love of my life is serving life w/o parole and was 19 also. He’s served 15 years now and has changed, grown up and matured. Have you read about the science that states teens are not fully matured until their mid 20’s and should not be given life w/o parole at such a young age? 11 men were released on this science and more states need to follow suit and parole those who have changed and matured and will not repeat their mistakes! They deserve a 2nd chance. There is a video on this called second chance kids also! Good Luck with your husband!

Jacquelyne Garza

Jacquelyne Garza

What year where the conjugal visits taken away in California, I think it was 1994 or 1995 or 1996 which one was it ??? Please tell me.

GP

The article plainly states that CA is one of the remaining states allowing such visitation. I’ve also seen them taking place on MSNBC’s Lock Up.

bob

Will inmates who have prior rules violations for drug smuggling into the prison be permitted conjugal visits?

candi

does anyone know the list of things you can take into your conjugal visit?

C.J.

Go to the prison website

Mahlia

So inmates who have life without the possibility of parole can’t have conjugal visits at all? My guy has been transferred to a level 3 prison now. Does that mean anything?

lizy vicent

lizy vicent

I believe anybody that owns 100% of your heart is worth fighting for. Yes, I am boasting because I never adhered to some negative advice from my parents when I was about getting married. There was a war between our two family then my husband was his mothers puppy, his family members used him a lot that he cant make any decision without consulting them. What surprised me most was the moment a 36-year-old man seeks his parent and some family members consent before dating anyone, the worst happened when he was instructed to bring me along to their country home in Rampart, New Orleans, it was risky to accept such invitation.The war between our families started when he finally proposed (that was about 4 years ago), his family gave some conditions if he must wife me (we have to live with them), I was in shock when my husband accepted and was happy with their conditions (so crazy). My family wagged and demanded I should breakup with him immediately.I decided to give him the last shot as a man whom has already taken over 100% of my heart, I took a risk to go spiritual with them by consulting Priest Udene via [email protected] , I dont know how but the spiritual father already knew I was going to consult him. He first of all told me the danger I was into and how my husband has been enslaved since birth, how they keep brain washing him to do their wills.Like the quote that says a person sees clearly only with the heart, I realized that nobody saw what I saw in my husband and thats why I used the help of PRIEST UDENE to put him out of his misery. His eyes where opened by PRIEST UDENE for the first time, his family fell in love with me and granted every of our request, our families have known peace since after the love spell.It is over 2 years after the love spell and my husband has continued to improve every day without interference from his family. I have waited too long to share this amazing piece. Thanks for your time and also to PRIEST UDENE. I knew him through reading some amazing testimonies on blogs.

Tracey Duffy

Tracey Duffy

Are the visits during the weekend or weekdays, usually?

Patricia Monteiro

Patricia Monteiro

Me and my fuance plan to marry soon. He is serving a 15 to life sentence and has been in nearly 4 years now. He does not have a release date. He is single celled in a level 4 prison. He has a history of violence. Will he be eligible for conjucal visits upon marriage ?

Kat

does patton state hospital allow family visits?

mariah clifton

mariah clifton

hi…me and boyfriend are trying to get married in the california state prison but he has a prior domestic abuse charge on him from years ago with his babymomma does that stop us from conjugal visits once we are married?

jackie larbi

jackie larbi

Thank god that we do not allow this to happen in are prisons.

Cancel Reply

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

Current ye@r *

Leave this field empty

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Map Options

map placeholder

Conjugal Visit Laws by State 2024

California refers to these visits as contact visits. Conjugal visits have had a notorious past recently in the United States , as they were often not allowed to see their family unless it was for brief contact or to speak with them on the phone. Conjugal visits began as a way for an incarcerated partner to spend private time with their domestic partner, spouse, or life partner. Historically, these were granted as a result of mental health as well as some rights that have since been argued in court. For example, cases have gone to the Supreme Court which have been filed as visits being considered privileges instead of rights.

The right to procreate, religious freedom, marital privacy and to abstain from cruel and unusual punishment has been brought up and observed by the court. Of course, married spouses can't procreate if one is incarcerated, and this has been a topic of hot debate in the legal community for years. Although the rules have since been relaxed to allow more private time with one's family, especially to incentivize good behavior and rehabilitation, it is still a controversy within social parameters.

In 1993, only 17 states had conjugal visit programs, which went down to 6 in 2000. By 2015, almost all states had eliminated the need for these programs in favor of more progressive values. California was one of the first to create a program based around contact visits, which allows the inmate time with their family instead of "private time" with their spouses as a means of forced love or procreation.

Washington and Connecticut

Connecticut and Washington have similar programs within their prison systems, referring to conjugal visits as extended family visits. Of course, the focus has been to take the stigma away from conjugal visits as a means of procreation, a short time, and a privilege as a result of good behavior. Extended family visits are much more wholesome and inclusive, giving relatively ample time to connect with one's family, regardless if they have a partner or not. Inmates can see their children, parents, cousins, or anyone who is deemed to have been, and still is, close to the prisoner.

Of course, there are proponents of this system that say this aids rehabilitation in favor of being good role models for their children or younger siblings. Others feel if someone has committed a heinous crime, their rights should be fully stripped away to severely punish their behavior.

On a cheerier note, New York has named its program the "family reunion program", which is an apt name for the state that holds the largest city in America by volume, New York City. NYC's finest have always had their handful of many different issues, including organized crime. The authorities are seeking a larger change in the incarceration system and want to adopt a stance that focuses more on the rehabilitation of the inmate that shows signs of regret, instead of severe punishment for punishment's sake.

Download Table Data

Enter your email below, and you'll receive this table's data in your inbox momentarily.

  • JSTOR Daily
  • KLAQ El Paso - KLAQFM

       

  • Login or Sign up
  • Research Finds that Conjugal Visits Correlate with Fewer Sexual Assaults

A study conducted by researchers at Florida International University (FIU) found that state prison systems that permit conjugal visits report fewer rapes and sexual assaults than those where such visits are prohibited – a finding that the researchers said tends to dispute the theory that sex offenses are crimes of power rather than a means of sexual gratification.

“Our findings propel the idea that sexual violence can be attenuated given appropriate policy initiatives,” stated the authors of the 2012 study, Stewart D’Alessio, Jamie Flexon and Lisa Stolzenberg. In spite of the report’s findings, two states recently announced that they are discontinuing their conjugal visitation programs.

The FIU study was conducted over a three-year period, from 2004-2006, in the five states that provided conjugal visits at that time: California, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York and Washington. [See: PLN , May 2013, p.1].

“Inmate-on-inmate sexual offending is much less pronounced in states that allow conjugal visitation,” the study concluded.

While sexual violence occurred in state prison systems that prohibit conjugal visits at an average rate of 226 incidents per 100,000 prisoners, it occurred almost four times less frequently in the five states that permitted such visits – 57 per 100,000 prisoners.

The FIU researchers said the effect of conjugal visitation in reducing sexual assaults among prisoners should encourage more states to consider allowing such visits, which the study noted have other positive effects. For example, conjugal visits, also known as family visits, help “improve the functioning of a marriage by maintaining an inmate’s role as husband or wife, improve the inmate’s behavior while incarcerated, counter the effects of prisonization, and improve post-release success by enhancing the inmate’s ability to maintain ties with his or her family.”

“Additionally,” the study continued, “because conjugal visitation is reported to reduce homosexual activity and because AIDS is often spread by homosexual activity, conjugal visitation may help to attenuate the spread of AIDS in prison.”

The researchers acknowledged their study had certain limitations, particularly that rape and sexual assault among prisoners are underreported and, as a result, there could have been more incidents of sexual victimization in states that allow conjugal visits than reflected in their data.

Nevertheless, the authors of the study maintained that their findings have “other policy implications.” Treatment programs, they argued, “should be geared to view sexual offending as a sex crime instead of solely as a crime of power.” Such programs, the study said, could reduce recidivism among sex offenders.

On February 1, 2014, Mississippi joined the 45 states that prohibit conjugal visits, halting the century-old practice due to what officials called budget issues and concerns about babies being born as a possible result of the visits.

“There are costs associated with the staff’s time, having to escort inmates to and from the visitation facility, supervising personal hygiene and keeping up with the infrastructure of the facility,” Mississippi DOC Commissioner Christopher B. Epps said in a press release. “Then, even though we provide contraception, we have no idea how many women are getting pregnant only for the child to be raised by one parent.”

Of the more than 22,000 prisoners in Mississippi state prisons, just 155 were allowed conjugal visits in fiscal year 2013. Under the program, the visits were available only to prisoners classified as minimum- or medium-security who did not have a written rules violation within the previous six months.

“While both the extended family visitation and conjugal visit program involve a small percentage of inmates, the cost coupled with big-ticket items adds up,” Epps stated. “The benefits of the programs don’t outweigh the cost in the overall budget.”

Family members who participated in the visits strongly disagreed.

Tina Perry, 49, who had been visiting her incarcerated husband every few months for the past eight years, said prisoners’ spouses should not be forced to suffer any more than they already do, and the state should not deprive them of something that is an infrequent but important part of their relationship.

Some spouses argued it’s not about the sex but rather about privacy. “The little 60 minutes isn’t a lot of time, but I appreciate it because we can just talk and hold each other and be with each other,” said Ebony Fisher, 25, who would drive nearly three hours to see her husband, who is serving a 60-year sentence. But Fisher also admitted that the end of conjugal visits means no more children for the couple.

“Let me have that option,” she said. “I feel like they are taking away my choice.”

“You never just get husband and wife time” during regular prison visits, noted Amy Parsons, who drove eight hours for a one-hour conjugal visit with her husband, who is not due to be released until 2022.

“It’s not romantic, but it doesn’t matter,” she said. “I just want people to realize it’s about the alone time with your husband. I understand they are in there for a reason. Obviously they did something wrong. But they are human, too. So are we.”

Even prison officials conceded that the visits were a deterrent to unruly behavior among prisoners. “Conjugal visits have been a privilege,” noted Mississippi DOC spokeswoman Tara Booth. “So in that sense, it has, as other internal opportunities, helped to maintain order.”

On April 16, 2014, New Mexico prison officials announced the end of conjugal visits effective the following month, citing concerns about contraband and sexually transmitted diseases. They estimated annual savings of around $120,000 by discontinuing the visitation program, which had been in effect for 30 years.

“Some of these policies are old and tired,” said Corrections Secretary Gregg Marcantel. “They aren’t producing the outcomes we need to help our inmates and make our communities safer.”

Conjugal visitation was implemented in New Mexico following an infamous 1980 riot at the state penitentiary near Santa Fe that resulted in 33 deaths; the visits were intended to help reduce tension in the prison population.

“After two years of research we found the overnight stays had no impact on decreasing the rate of inmates returning to jail,” said New Mexico DOC spokeswoman Alex Tomlin, who noted that only around 150 prisoners qualified for conjugal visits. The visits will be replaced with family programs that include classes on parenting and financial planning.

When discontinuing their conjugal visitation programs, neither Mississippi nor New Mexico officials addressed the findings of the FIU study relative to the effect conjugal visits have on reducing sexual assaults among prisoners.

Sources: “The Effect of Conjugal Visitation on Sexual Violence in Prison,” American Journal of Criminal Justice (February 2012); www.usatoday.com; www.mdoc.state.ms.us; Reuters

As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.

Subscribe today

Already a subscriber? Login

More from this issue:

  • DC Circuit: Federal Prisoner not Limited to Seeking Relief via Habeas Corpus , by Michael Brodheim
  • Philadelphia Sued Over Rejection of Ad Criticizing U.S. Incarceration Policies , by Michael Brodheim
  • California: Surety Entitled to Exoneration of Bail Bond Forfeited as a Result of Defendant’s Deportation , by Michael Brodheim
  • High-Ranking Illinois Prison Official Fired due to Criminal History
  • Seventh Circuit: Prisoner with Back Condition Stated Claim for Fall from Upper Bunk , by Michael Brodheim
  • Liberty Interest Necessary to Trigger Arkansas Judicial Review , by Mark Wilson
  • Report: Increase in Federal Prison Population, Overcrowding , by Derek Gilna
  • Kansas: Prison Healthcare Officials Engaged in Continued Deliberate Indifference , by Robert Warlick
  • D.A. Drops Charges Against Oklahoma Parole Board Members , by Christopher Zoukis
  • Washington County Jail Remains Closed after Voters Reject Tax Hike
  • Pennsylvania Warrantless, Suspicionless Search Probation Condition Held Invalid , by Mark Wilson
  • Idaho Supreme Court Vacates Summary Judgment for Pepper Spray Manufacturer , by Mark Wilson
  • Lawsuit Against Missouri Jail Proceeds as Two Guards Plead Guilty
  • No “Reasonable Efforts” to Reunite Oregon Sex Offender with His Son , by Mark Wilson
  • Reports on Elderly Prisoners Spur Call for Reforms
  • States Adopt Sentencing Changes Following Supreme Court Ruling on Juvenile Lifers
  • Prison Education Programs Threatened , by Matthew Clarke
  • Oregon PPS Sanctions May Not Exceed 180 Days; Prior Contrary Ruling Overturned , by Mark Wilson
  • California Prison Regulation Governing Gang Validation Upheld by Ninth Circuit , by Michael Brodheim
  • Wisconsin DOC Equips Guards with Pepper Spray, Tasers
  • Cancellation of BOP Elderly Offender Pilot Program Moots Appeal , by Michael Brodheim
  • Oregon Judge Scolded for Courtroom Rant , by Mark Wilson
  • Pay Tel Receives Waiver of Prison Phone Rate Caps
  • Connecticut Town Raises Stink Over Sewage Discharged by State Prison
  • California: Trial Court Cannot Abdicate its Responsibility to Examine Peace Officer Personnel Records , by Michael Brodheim
  • Massachusetts: Order Relieving Sex Offender of Registration Not Vacated Upon Probation Violation , by David Reutter
  • Warden Granted Qualified Immunity for Two-year Visitation Suspension , by David Reutter
  • Former Colorado DOC Official Pleads Guilty to Felony Menacing Charges
  • Witness Protection Program Termination Unreviewable; 188 Days in SHU Triggers Due Process Protections , by Mark Wilson
  • Second Circuit: Federal Prisoner States Conditions of Confinement Claim , by David Reutter
  • Seventh Circuit Clarifies Standard for Recruiting Counsel in Pro Se Cases , by David Reutter
  • North Dakota Courtroom Shackling Requires Independent Assessment by Judge , by Mark Wilson
  • California Improves Compensation Process for Wrongfully Convicted Prisoners
  • Florida Prison System Ordered to Provide Kosher Meals
  • Book Review: Banking and Financial Management Course (1st Ed.), by Prisoner Assistant , by Gary Hunter
  • California: Sexually Violent Predators May be Conditionally Released from Custody Even if Homeless , by Michael Brodheim
  • Ninth Circuit: County May be Liable for Wrongful Conviction Even if District Attorney Enjoys Absolute Immunity
  • Seventh Circuit Reverses Dismissal of Prisoner’s 99-Page Complaint , by Mark Wilson
  • Massachusetts DOC, Hospital Officials Disciplined in Prisoner’s Death , by Derek Gilna
  • From the Editor , by Paul Wright
  • News in Brief
  • A Home of Their Own , by Lisa Riordan Seville

More from these topics:

  • Alabama DOC Proves Truly “Heartless” , Jan. 1, 2024. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Guard Misconduct , Threats by Staff , Parole Board Misconduct , Retaliation for Litigating , Retaliation for Media Contact , Retaliation for Organizing , Whistleblowing , Retaliatory Segregation , Prison/Jail Murders , Failure to Protect (General) , Staffing , Wrongful Death , Failure to Protect (Wrongful Death) , Excessive Force (Wrongful Death) , Control Units/SHU/Solitary Confinement .
  • West Virginia Pretrial Detainee’s Lawsuit for Sexual Abuse Survives Dismissal Stage , Jan. 1, 2024. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Sex Offenders (Discrimination) , Failure to Protect (General) .
  • $10,000 Verdict for Fired Guard’s Failure to Protect Louisiana Prisoner From Stabbing , Jan. 1, 2024. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Snitch Jacketing , Failure to Protect (General) , Attorney Fee Awards , Attorney Fees (PLRA) .
  • Eighth Circuit Says Arkansas Prisoner’s Medical Incapacity May Excuse PLRA Exhaustion Failure , Jan. 1, 2024. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Failure to Protect (General) , Administrative Exhaustion (PLRA) , Grievances .
  • New York Adding Names to Tombstones of Dead Prisoners , Dec. 1, 2023. Visiting , Extended Family Visiting , Family .
  • South Carolina Supreme Court Denies Prisoner’s Challenge to DOC Policy Restricting Visitors to People He Knew Before Incarceration , Nov. 15, 2023. Visiting , Video Visitation .
  • Five Years After Limiting Personal Visits and Banning Mail, Drug Use Worse in Pennsylvania Prisons , Sept. 15, 2023. War on Drugs , Mail Regulations , Visiting .
  • Ex-Felon “Dirtbags” Accused of Ordering Hit on Detainee at Florida Jail, But Questions Linger , March 1, 2023. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Excessive Force .
  • 18 Stabbings in Less Than Nine Months at Oklahoma CoreCivic Prison , March 1, 2023. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Corrections Corporation of America/CoreCivic .
  • $14,000 Paid by California to Mentally Ill Prisoner Who Alleged Repeated Maulings by Guards , March 1, 2023. Prisoner-Prisoner Assault , Guard Misconduct , Mental Health .

Read the Latest on Page Six

latest in World News

Scientist claims 'smoking gun' evidence COVID-19 intentionally created by researchers in Chinese lab

Scientist claims 'smoking gun' evidence COVID-19 intentionally...

Taekwondo instructor strangled student, 7, hour after black belt ceremony before stabbing dad, stealing victim's clothes: cops

Taekwondo instructor strangled student, 7, hour after black belt...

Wife-killer who turned himself in after 22 years hiding in rainforest will walk free again as judges rule statute of limitations is up

Wife-killer who turned himself in after 22 years hiding in...

Over 100 Palestinians killed in Gaza, Israel blames stampede to get aid

Hamas, IDF clash over how hundreds of Palestinians were killed...

Russian-American ballerina Ksenia Karelina's treason case dealt a new blow after rejected appeal

American ballerina still stuck Russia after court rejects appeal...

Putin warns of risk of nuclear war, says Moscow can strike Western targets

Putin warns of nuclear war risk, says Moscow can strike Western...

Bride-to-be, 25, posts her own obituary to LinkedIn, tells fiancé to 'go enjoy life' after succumbing to rare form of cancer

Bride-to-be, 25, posts her own obituary to LinkedIn, tells...

European Commission president says EU should use frozen Russian assets to fund Ukraine: 'No greater use'

European Commission president says EU should use frozen Russian...

Natalee holloway killer joran van der sloot having sex with three different women while serving life in prison.

  • View Author Archive
  • Get author RSS feed

Thanks for contacting us. We've received your submission.

Natalee Holloway killer Joran van der Sloot is having sex with three different women, despite serving a 28-year sentence in a Peruvian prison for murder.

“He was approved for conjugal visits,” a spokesperson for Peru’s National Penitentiary Institute tells The Post. “He has the same rights as any other prisoner.”

The news comes as no surprise to people who know the 36-year-old van der Sloot, who last year finally confessed to the brutal 2005 murder of 18-year-old high school senior Natalee Holloway in Aruba.

“He’s a player, and has always been a player,” his childhood friend, Cas Arends, told the Post. “Women have always been attracted to him for some reason.”

Joran van der Sloot in chains

After escaping authorities investigating Holloway’s death in the Netherlands territory and the US, van der Sloot ended up in Peru , where he was eventually convicted of killing his then-girlfriend, business student Stefany Flores Ramirez, in 2012 and sentenced to 28 years. 

Chillingly, she died five years to the day of Hollway’s death.

Under Peruvian law, prisoners are allowed private visits to have sex with partners from the outside.

Natalee Holloway portrait

Visitors are allowed to spend up to two hours in a private setting with inmates at a time and according to authorities, van der Sloot has listed three different women on his most recent application, which was subsequently approved.

One of the approved women is his longtime girlfriend, Eva Pacohuanaco.

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get the best stories straight to your inbox.

Thanks for signing up!

Please provide a valid email address.

By clicking above you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy .

Never miss a story.

Pacohuanco began dating van der Sloot in 2020. Shortly after they met, she allegedly smuggled drugs into Juliaca prison by hiding nearly 300 grams of cocaine and 140 grams of marijuana into the prison by hiding them in food, including 19 sugar beets.

Beth Holloway at a press conference

Prosecutors initially sought an 18-year sentence for her. Although Pacohuanco was not convicted, van der Sloot was given an extra 18 years in prison.

Despite van der Sloot’s relationship with Pacohuanco, his friends say he will never be monogamous, even behind bars. 

Van der Sloot is currently being held at the notorious Ancon 1 prison north of Lima.

Over the years and at two different facilities, seven different women have been approved for conjugal visits with van der Sloot, including his ex-wife, Leidy Figueroa, who got pregnant while he was behind bars. Their daughter, Dusha Trudie, was born in 2014.

Van der Sloot was just 17 in 2005 when Holloway vanished while on a class trip to Aruba.

As the last person to see her alive, van der Sloot was the prime suspect and often gave conflicting stories about her disappearance.  

After his guilty plea, van der Sloot was sentenced to 20 years in US prison, to be served concurrently with his Peruvian incarceration. He was then returned to Peru last October.

Beacuse of the statute of limitations in Aruba, he cannot be charged with Hollway’s murder, despite his confession.

After van der Sloot was convicted in the US, Hollway’s mother Beth said in an interview with the New York Times: “His hold over me is gone. It took 18 years for us to shift roles to where now I feel like I was the victor over him.”

Share this article:

Joran van der Sloot in chains

Advertisement

prison have conjugal visits

Unilag Law Review

  • Online Forum

Conjugal Rights for Prisoners: To Be Or Not To Be?

  • Posted by ULR
  • Categories Online Forum
  • Date January 21, 2018
  • Comments 1 comment

AUTHOR: BUSARI HALIMAT TEMITAYO

Human rights are the basic and inalienable guarantees that describe certain standards of human behaviour, and are regularly protected as legal rights in municipal and international laws. A correctional facility such as a prison serves to confine and rehabilitate prisoners, and it is often said that human rights do not stop at prison gates. However, the conditions of confinement in many prisons today have been the object of concern all over the world. One of such is conjugal rights for prisoners, which remains a controversial issue with two distinct points of argument. This paper discusses the objectives of imprisonment, explains the concept of conjugal rights, considers the arguments for and against it and posits that imprisonment should not amount to its suspension.

INTRODUCTION

Prisons in Africa are often considered the worst in the world, while other prison systems are worse in terms of violence, overcrowding and a host of other problems. This is not to argue that prisons in Africa are human rights friendly as many are in deficient condition and their practices are at odds with human rights standards.

The objectives of imprisonment can be summarised into four: retribution; deterrence; incapacitation; and rehabilitation. Retribution is punishment for crimes committed against the society by depriving criminals of their freedom, as a way of making them pay for their crimes. Incapacitation refers to the removal of criminals from the society to facilitate the protection of the public. Deterrence entails the prevention of the commission of future crimes. It is hoped that prisons provide warnings to people thinking about committing crimes and that the possibility of being imprisoned will discourage people from breaking the law while also serving as an instrument for the reformation and rehabilitation of prisoners. Also, it is submitted that what is needed is proper manual to bring behavioural changes in the prisoners to ensure that the chances of them going back into crimes upon release are slim to none.

CONJUGAL RIGHTS

Conjugal rights are the sexual rights or privileges implied by, involved in and regarded as exercisable in law, by each partner in a marriage. They refer to the mutual rights and privileges between two individuals arising from the state of being married. These rights include mutual rights of companionship, support, sexual relations, affection and the like. The act of a husband or wife staying separately from the other without any lawful cause is referred to as subtraction of conjugal rights.

CONJUGAL RIGHTS FOR PRISONERS

Conjugal rights are usually exercised through visitation for prisoners. A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison (or jail) is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor, usually his or her legal spouse during which both parties may engage in sexual intercourse. This visitation could be from the spouse or partner of the inmate to the inmate within the walls of the prison, or through other means such as the provision of a structure by the prison where supplies such as soap, condoms, lubricants, bed linens and towels may be provided, or in certain cases where prisoners are allowed to leave the prison premises, to the outside world under supervision.

Some scholars posit that for an offender who is sentenced to imprisonment, his or her punishment is just imprisonment. Thus, the punishment should not deprive such an individual of his or her rights. According to this school of thought, the prisoner should only be punished by imprisonment which he or she has been convicted for in a fair judicial process in a just and independent court. This point of view serves as the bedrock for legal systems which provide for and permit conjugal visits for prisoners.

The generally recognised basis for permitting such visits in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner’s eventual return to normal life after release from prison. Additionally, they serve as an incentive to motivate inmates to comply with the various day-to-day rules and regulations of the prison, and to avoid any infringement which may result in disqualification from having conjugal visits. Those in favour of conjugal visits argue that it will help in the rehabilitation of inmates, prevent sexual harassment and depression in jail. They further argue that it gives psychological relief to some prisoners and gets them to know that they are still responsible and that deprivation of conjugal rights amounts to double punishment. Furthermore, some of the supporters of this position assert that conjugal rights are God-given and not government-given and that it would be unfair to the partners of convicts to deny them conjugal rights as though they were also convicted.

Out of the 196 countries in the world, only a few permits conjugal visits for their prisoners. Some of these countries include: Australia; Canada; Denmark; Germany; Israel; Mexico; India; Jamaica; Pakistan; Saudi Arabia; Spain; United Kingdom; and the United States of America (USA). However, it is important to note that of all fifty states in the USA, only four (Connecticut, New York, California and Washington) currently allow conjugal visits, which are otherwise known as extended family visits.5 Also, these rights do not exist in the USA federal prison system. In addition, conjugal visits are considered a privilege for prisoners who have exhibited good behaviour during their term of incarceration.

In the USA, the Supreme Court and several courts have held that prisoners do not have a constitutional right to conjugal visits. In Pakistan, the Sindh home department grants conjugal rights to convicted inmates under which they would be allowed to meet their spouses for one day or night in 3 months. A notification was issued following a Supreme Court order on 6 April 2010 to implement same in all the provinces and is part of the government’s jail reforms. Jamaica recently adopted this position following the announcement made by the National Security Minister, Robert Montague, where he stated that he believes that allowing inmates to have sexual relations with their partners will be beneficial. This development in Jamaica however, has been highly criticised.

On the other hand, the argument against conjugal rights for prisoners is centered on the position that punishment should not come with perks. This school of thought, while recognising that prisoners are human beings entitled to basic human rights, posits that punishments cease to have meaning when they come with perks. Sending someone who has been convicted of a crime to prison is the government’s way of giving the convict the opportunity to take time off their usual lifestyle, reflect upon their actions and hopefully, be molded and reformed to be law abiding citizens. Here, it is regarded that depriving prisoners of pleasures such as sex is to serve as a way of understanding that there are repercussions other than loss of rights to liberty and movement when crimes are committed.

In some states where prisoners are not allowed conjugal rights, there have been reported actions both in and outside of courts where the recognition and acknowledgement of these rights are being fought for. Premium Times Nigeria reported over two years ago that Charles Okah sued the Nigerian government, wanting inter alia, the allowance of conjugal visits in prison. The applicant sought a declaration that the refusal of the respondents to allow for conjugal visits to the prison breached the fundamental rights of both convicted and awaiting trial inmates. Also, the Parliament’s committee on Human Rights in Uganda tasked the Commissioner General of Prisons, Dr. Johnson Byabashaija to explain why prisoners, especially those serving long sentences were not allowed to enjoy conjugal rights. Byabashaija responded, saying that Uganda’s laws have no provision for conjugal rights because they are one of the several limited rights with those in the conflict with the law. He also added that though the law is silent on the matter, allowing conjugal visits would stretch the already small budget allocated to prisons in Uganda. These actions show the eagerness and readiness of a significant portion of the citizenry of these countries to accept conjugal rights for prisoners in these states.

Under Islamic law, the prison system is a little different, as there are rare cases for imprisonment. In addition, imprisonment here is not the foundation of punishment, rather, it is supplementary and mainly for simple offences. Prisoners here are often incarcerated at the discretion of the judge and usually for offences that have no specific punishment, or in cases where such a prisoner is deemed to be very harmful to the society. Generally, such prisoners enjoy all rights, (including conjugal rights), except the right to freedom of movement. However, for serious crimes, if in the course of discipline, the state decides that depriving the prisoner of certain things will aid the rectification of such a prisoner; conjugal rights may be denied if they happen to be a part of those things.

In the study of criminology, one realises that the inability to find a balance between the objectives of imprisonment, especially punishment and rehabilitation accounts for the main reason for the failure of the prison system. The rate of recidivism all over the world affirms this. According to a report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) in the USA, about 68 percent of 405,000 prisoners released in 30 states in 2005 were arrested for a new crime within three years of their release from prison, and 77 percent were arrested within five years. In 2010, the Ministry of Justice figures in the United Kingdom (UK) disclosed that 14 prisons in England and Wales, most of which hold short-term inmates, have re conviction rates of more than 70 percent. The statistics underline the long-term ineffectiveness of the criminal justice system at diverting persistent offenders from a life of crime. Consequently over time, it has been observed that the emphasis placed on punishment being an end result of imprisonment is a little excessive. The argument against granting conjugal rights to prisoners seems to fail to consider that extreme punishment tends to harden people in need of correction.

As important as the punishment factor is, it is relevant to keep in mind that while nothing can be done to change a crime or crimes that a prisoner might have committed, it is possible to effect change(s) to the character of such a prisoner. This may directly or indirectly prevent that prisoner from relapsing into the criminal world upon release. This can be achieved through the implementation of a technique that encompasses the four objectives of imprisonment aforementioned.

One of the biggest advantages to having a prison that allows conjugal rights through conjugal visits is that prisoners tend to follow the rules and be obedient, for fear of losing those rights. Family relationships have a huge impact on the prisoner’s motivation to be rehabilitated. This means that granting conjugal rights to prisoners will not only be a source of help and support to the prisoners during incarceration, but will also increase the chances of the prison system being more effective in securing the rehabilitation and reformation of prisoners.

On the long run, keeping the aforementioned points in mind, ceteris paribus , the advantages of granting conjugal rights outweigh the disadvantages. It is submitted that prisoners should be granted conjugal rights upon careful and proper regulation. If this is done, it is highly likely that the rate of recidivism will reduce. Furthermore, states are encouraged to grant conjugal rights where it is observed that such rights will assist a prisoner in his or her reformation process.

Halimat Temitayo Busari is a law student in her penultimate year. her interests in areas of law include but are not limited to: human rights; intellectual property and tax. She can be reached via mail at [email protected]

Tag: Africa , Conjugal Rights , Conjugal Rights for prisoners , Human Rights , Human Rights in Africa , Human Rights in Nigeria , Rights of Prisoners

' src=

Previous post

Cryptocurrency: The Role Of Law In The Digital Economy

Legal consequences of not having a national identification number in nigeria, you may also like, an examination of the international law approach towards state responsibilities in addressing climate change and its overall effectiveness.

    ABSTRACT This paper seeks to examine the position of international law towards state responsibilities in addressing climate change and its effectiveness over the years. In order to do this, the paper first examines the concepts of climate change …

TOWARDS MARITIME SECURITY IN THE GULF OF GUINEA: NIGERIA IN PERSPECTIVE

Abstract The Gulf of Guinea (GoG) has gained notoriety as “The New Danger Zone”. Maritime insecurity is a major regional problem compromising the development of this strategic economic area and threatening maritime trade in the short term and stability of …

WhatsApp Image 2021-12-30 at 22.04.29

THE PERSECUTION OF JEHOVAH’S WITNESSES IN ERITREA – THE NEED FOR A NEW APPROACH IN ADDRESSING GROSS VIOLATIONS OF INTERNATIONAL HUMAN RIGHTS LAWS & PRINCIPLES

' src=

Leave A Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

  • WordPress.org
  • Documentation
  • Support Forums
  • New Terms of Use
  • New Privacy Policy
  • Your Privacy Choices
  • Closed Caption Policy
  • Accessibility Statement

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. ©2024 FOX News Network, LLC. All rights reserved. Quotes displayed in real-time or delayed by at least 15 minutes. Market data provided by Factset . Powered and implemented by FactSet Digital Solutions . Legal Statement . Mutual Fund and ETF data provided by Refinitiv Lipper .

Peru allows Natalee Holloway's killer multiple conjugal visits for his mental health, rehabilitation

Peru's prison population has a constitutional right to conjugal visits, official says.

Michael Ruiz

Beth Holloway believes Joran van der Sloot's confession of murdering her daughter was 'corroborated'

Beth Holloway believes that Joran van der Sloot's confession to murdering his daughter in Aruba is corroborated.

Joran van der Sloot, who murdered Alabama teen Natalee Holloway when she refused his sexual advances and then killed Peru business heiress Stefany Flores exactly five years later, is currently seeing up to three women in conjugal visits in his Peruvian prison.

A Peruvian official with knowledge of the situation told Fox News Digital that every inmate's right to conjugal visits is protected by the country's constitution.

"That Joran van ser Sloot is having free rein to have sexual encounters [is] nothing strange," he said. "Within the intraprison environment, the inmate's sexual relationship is important for his rehabilitation and resocialization."

NATALEE HOLLOWAY SUSPECT JORAN VAN DER SLOOT GETTING DIVORCED AFTER PRISON DRUG SMUGGLING SCANDAL

Joran van der Sloot is surrounded by armed guards.

Joran van der Sloot, center, smiles as he prepares to leave the airport in Lima, Peru, on Thursday, June 8, 2023. (Col. Carlos López Aeda for Fox News Digital)

"So much so that the intimate or conjugal visit is part of the sexual rights of every inmate, which is why it must be conceived as a right due to its implication, one that does not have to be limited, much less linked to any conditioning element for its concession, and that it will have its manifestation of a constitutional right, since it is part of the development of the human person," the official added.

In the United States, only California, Connecticut, New York and Washington currently allow conjugal visits for inmates – as a privilege and not a right, according to David Gelman, a New Jersey-based defense attorney and former prosecutor.

"It’s a slap in the face to the United States judicial system," he told Fox News Digital. "He should be in a federal facility, not in Peru enjoying leisure and women, multiple women."

Natalee Holloway and friends pose in a 2005 Spring Break photo

Natalee Hollway, center, went missing during a spring break trip in 2005 and was never found. Last year, the prime suspect in her disappearance, Joran van der Sloot, admitted to killing her as part of a plea deal after he extorted her mother for information on the case. (FBI)

The federal prison system, which van der Sloot avoided as part of his plea deal on extortion charges, does not allow them. And that was a likely factor in his decision to plead guilty, Gelman said.

"He took this deal in the United States knowing he would probably never see the inside of a federal cell in the United States of America -- for this exact reason," he said.

This is a slap in the face, and it’s just sticking the dagger in the heart of the Holloway family. They’ve been through so much with this individual – and calling him an individual is being a little nice. — David Gelman, former prosecutor

COURT RELEASES RECORDING OF JORAN VAN DER SLOOT'S NATALEE HOLLOWAY CONFESSION

Van der Sloot murdered Flores in 2010 and pleaded guilty but refused to fess up in Holloway's case for nearly 20 years. He claimed he killed her in a fit of anger after she learned about his connection to Holloway's disappearance. They met in her father's casino in Lima, and he beat her to death in his hotel room the following morning. 

ARUBA CONSIDERS NEW CHARGES IN NATALEE HOLLOWAY MURDER AFTER SUSPECT'S SURPRISE CONFESSION IN US PLEA DEAL

He finally admitted in October to killing her with a cinder block on an Aruba beach as part of a plea deal for an extortion case in which he tried to shake down the victim's mother for $250,000.

Leidy Figueroa is pictured wearing a wedding dress and holding flowers

File photo of Leidy Figueroa in a wedding dress. The Peruvian national married Joran van der Sloot, who was convicted in the killing of fellow Peruvian Stephany Flores. (Splash News/Shutterstock)

JORAN VAN DER SLOOT'S WHIRLWIND PLEA DEAL: ‘HE WON THE GAME,’ BUT FAMILY ACCEPTS CLOSURE

Despite a documented history of murdering women, van der Sloot got married in prison to Leidy Figueroa in 2014 while serving a 28-year sentence for Flores' death. 

Figueroa was seven months pregnant when they tied the knot. His Lima-based lawyer, Maximo Altez, told Fox News Digital in May 2023 that she was divorcing him after he had years tacked on to his sentence for smuggling drugs into the prison with the help of another girlfriend, Eva Pacohuanaco.

Joran van der Sloot bends over to sign paperwork

Joran van der Sloot signing papers at Peru's mountaintop Challapalca Prison, where he was being held previously. (APTN)

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

"He’s a player, and has always been a player," his childhood friend, Cas Arends, told the New York Post . "Women have always been attracted to him for some reason."

Armando Regil Velasco contributed to this report.

Michael Ruiz is a reporter for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to [email protected] and on Twitter: @mikerreports

Antisemitism Exposed

Fox News' "Antisemitism Exposed" newsletter brings you stories on the rising anti-Jewish prejudice across the U.S. and the world.

You've successfully subscribed to this newsletter!

prison have conjugal visits

Mirror

'Playboy' murderer who killed schoolgirl, 18, is having sex with 3 different women in jail

Natalee Holloway's murderer Joran Van der Sloot continues his playboy ways behind bars in Peruvian prison despite his damning sentence or 28 years.

Van der Sloot was just 17 in 2005 when 18-year-old school senior Holloway vanished while on a class trip to Aruba and as the last person to see her alive, with conflicting versions of events, he became the prime suspect, pleading guilty.

But, despite the violent nature of his crime and the fact he is serving a whopping 28 year sentence in Peru, the killer continues to have sex with multiple women due to a surprising system approving conjugal visits in his prison.

He escaped investigators in Aruba by fleeing to the Netherlands territory and the US, before winding up in Peru. It was there where he was eventually convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend, business student Stefany Flores Ramirez, in 2012 and was sentenced to 28 years.

READ MORE Israel-Palestine war LIVE: Devastating Gaza hospital blast kills 471 with 314 injured

She died five years to the day that Holloway was brutally killed, a crime he finally admitted to last year. Van der Sloot is currently being held at the notorious Ancon 1 prison north of Lima, Peru. “He was approved for conjugal visits,” a spokesperson for Peru’s National Penitentiary Institute told The New York Post. “He has the same rights as any other prisoner.”

Those who know the 36-year-old van der Sloot are unsurprised that he is spending time with women in prison. “He’s a player, and has always been a player,” his childhood friend, Cas Arends, told the New York Post. “Women have always been attracted to him for some reason.”

Prison visitors are allowed to spend up to two hours in a private setting with inmates like Van der Sloot at a time and according to authorities, he has listed three different women on his most recent application for visitors of this nature. This was subsequently approved.

One of the approved women is his girlfriend of four years, Eva Pacohuanaco who began dating van der Sloot in 2020. She can visit despite the fact she allegedly smuggled drugs into Juliaca prison by hiding nearly 300 grams of cocaine and 140 grams of marijuana into the prison by hiding them in food.

For all the latest news, politics, sports, and showbiz from the USA, go to The Mirror US

He has had access to many women over the years and at two different facilities. A total of seven different women have been approved for conjugal visits with Van der Sloot, including his ex-wife, Leidy Figueroa, who got pregnant while he was behind bars and gave birth to his daughter, Dusha Trudie, who was born in 2014.

Cruel Van der Sloot lied multiple times about the murder of Holloway and also attempted to extort a quarter of a million dollars from her family.

You are using an outdated browser. Please upgrade your browser to improve your experience.

Washington State Department of Corrections logo

Prison Visits

The Department of Corrections (DOC) recognizes the vital role families play in the reentry process , and will support incarcerated individuals in maintaining ties with family, friends, and the community through personal visits and engagement with community stakeholders and partners. Reasonable efforts will be made to ensure visiting facilities are comfortable, pleasant, and permits informal communication and limited, appropriate physical contact.

Visitor Application Process

Visitor guidelines.

  • Approved Visitors List

Minor Visitors

International visitors, extended family visits, professionals, general visit information.

Application Processing Time Update: The Statewide Visit Unit (SVU) is currently working on processing a very high volume of visit applications. Applications are taking approximately 40-45 business days to process (business days do not include weekends or state holidays). Submitting more than one application will cause previous applications to be voided and the process to restart. Thank you for your patience and understanding.

All visitors must complete and submit a visitor application . A separate application must be completed for each proposed visitor (minor or adult). It is recommended that applicants have all required documentation ready and available prior to filling out the online application to ensure successful completion and submission. The Department only accepts Electronic Visit Applications for prison visits at this time.

Applications are generally processed within 30 business days of receipt, though in some cases more time may be needed. Please allow a minimum of eight weeks before inquiring with the Statewide Visit Unit regarding application status. Submitting multiple applications for an individual visitor will cause a delay in processing.

See Family & Friends and Professionals for information that may be applicable to your visit. All visitation policies and forms can be found on the Resources webpage. See Prison Visits Frequently Asked Questions for more information about visiting a prison facility.

DOC 450.300 Visits for Incarcerated Individuals (pdf) is applicable to all types of prison visits. Please note visitors whom are 18 years of age and older must present a valid, current photo identification at the time of the visit (i.e., driver's license or state issued identification card, international visitors must present their passport).

The following applies to in-person visitation:

  • Visits occur on a first come, first served basis. If the visit room is full, visitors may be turned away. Facility visit guidelines identify the process utilized by the facility to allow for other visitors to be afforded visit privileges. Please review the appropriate facility visitor guidelines for more information.
  • Facility emergencies may affect operations. These are unforeseen and visiting may be cancelled or end early without advanced notice. Visitors are urged to check the prison facility alerts & notices and to check with the facility prior to traveling.
  • For the safety of yourself and your loved ones, all persons are subject to search per DOC 420.340 Searching and Detaining Facility Visitors (pdf) .
  • To protect your loved one and other individuals in the facility, please stay home if you are sick.
  • Visit rooms, tables, chairs, restrooms and high-touch surface areas will be sanitized between visit sessions.

Facility Specific Information

Each facility has its own specific visitor guidelines, visiting hours, and event calendars, which can be accessed in the table below.

Prison Facility Visitor Guidelines, Visiting Hours & Event Calendars

Restrictive housing visiting.

Restricted housing will follow DOC 320.255 Restrictive Housing (pdf) policy for scheduling, hours, and will remain non-contact according to Restrictive Housing Level System Grid (Attachment 2) (pdf) .

Special Visits

Per DOC 450.300 Visits for Incarcerated Individuals (pdf) , the process for specials visits is at the discretion of the facility superintendent. Special visits may be requested utilizing the DOC 21-787 Special Visit Request (pdf) form.

Visitor Behavioral Observations

Per DOC 450.300 (pdf) , a record of each visit is entered into the statewide visit system. Visitor behavior observed by Department of Corrections’ staff may be electronically documented. Visitors may request a copy of behavior observation entries from their visitor profile in the statewide visit system via public records request .

Family & Friends

Approved visitor's list.

The visitor application approval process must be completed before an individual is placed on an incarcerated individual's Approved Visitor List.

  • Individuals may only be on one incarcerated individual's Approved Visitor List, with one exception .
  • When an incarcerated individual is transferred to another prison facility, his/her Approved Visitor List will remain and be available in the Statewide Visit System. Incarcerated individuals are responsible for notifying their visitors of transfers.
  • Individuals denied placement on an incarcerated individual's Approved Visitor List will be informed, in writing, of the reason for denial.
  • Incarcerated individuals may remove a visitor from their Approved Visitor List, or request to resume visits with the removed visitor. Visitors must submit a new application if they have been removed.
  • If an individual wishes to be removed from an Approved Visitor List, they must submit their request in writing to the Statewide Visit Unit .
  • A request to be removed from an incarcerated individual’s Approved Visitor’s List must be submitted prior to applying to visit another incarcerated individual. Please note, if you do not request to be removed prior to your new application being processed, you will be required to resubmit your application. This will restart the application processing time.
  • An individual removed from an Approved Visitor List must wait 90 calendar days before applying to visit the same or another incarcerated individual. When the visitor is requesting to visit a different incarcerated individual, the waiting period may be waived if the visitor never visited with the individual whose list they were removed from or if they have not visited in the last 90 days. If the visitor wishes to be added back to the visit list of the same incarcerated individual, the 90 day wait will not be waived.

Adobe PDF File

Minors are those individuals who are under 18 years of age. The following are required for all minors who will be visiting an incarcerated individual at a Department of Corrections (DOC) prison facility:

  • Minors must be on the incarcerated individual's Approved Visitor List .
  • Minors must be accompanied during the entire visit by their non-incarcerated parent/legal guardian, or a designated escort .

The following may also apply depending on the nature of the minor's visit:

  • If the minor is an infant or toddler, see the visitor's guidelines of the prison facility you will be visiting for information about what items are authorized.

International visitors must provide a copy of their passport photo page and a copy of their criminal history from their local jurisdiction, or a certificate of criminal records from the local jurisdiction that outlines all criminal history, or if there is no criminal history (misdemeanor or felony).

Extended Family Visits (CY 2019)

1,231 approved efv visitors made 3,805 visits to 688 incarcerated individuals in 2019..

Extended Family Visit (EFV) processing generally takes 8-10 weeks from the time that the department receives all necessary documentation. Please allow a minimum of 12 weeks before inquiring about the status of your EFV application. For more information refer to DOC 590.100 Extended Family Visiting (pdf) and the EFV Resource Guide (pdf) .

The requirements for EFV visitors that must be met include:

  • The visitors must be immediate family members who can provide legal verification of the relationship.
  • All EFV participants require Superintendent/designee approval.
  • If the incarcerated individual is incarcerated on a serious violent or sex offense, the EFV Review Committee must review and authorize EFV privileges.
  • In addition to the forms listed, there are several criteria that must be met for family, minors and incarcerated individual to be eligible for an Extended Family Visit. Please note the EFV application process can be lengthy, and additional documentation may be requested.
  • Visitors will submit applicable paperwork and documents by sending them to the address below.

Department of Corrections Attn: EFV Application Post Office Box 41118 Olympia, WA 98504-1118

  • Each individual visitor must also complete the Consent to Medical Treatment and Waiver of Liability form.

Adobe PDF Document

  • An orientation will be scheduled before your first EFV at the facility.
  • Please contact your incarcerated family member to initiate the EFV scheduling process.
  • If you are an approved EFV visitor and have any questions about EFV’s contact facility visit staff .
  • Visitors may only bring items that are identified on the Extended Family Visit Allowable Items list .
  • All policy requirements are applicable. Please take the time to review DOC 590.100 Extended Family Visiting (pdf) .
  • Individuals from one EFV group may not be within 6 feet of EFV participants from other groups within the EFV area.
  • If the incarcerated individual participating in the EFV is on medication/s via pill line, these medications will be brought to the EFV unit to be taken.
  • If a visitor is on controlled medication/s held by the facility, this medication will be brought to the EFV unit for the visitor to take them.

See Prison Visits Frequently Asked Questions and DOC 590.100 Extended Family Visiting (pdf) for more information.

Professional visitors are processed at the prison facility where the incarcerated individual is incarcerated. Professional visitors include:

  • Social Services Agency Representatives (except those identified as a visit supervisor for a minor visiting an incarcerated parent)

Professional visitors should contact the prison facility to coordinate their visit. See Prison & Video Frequently Asked Questions for more information.

Media Personnel

If media personnel would like to visit with a specific incarcerated individual, they must complete the same application process as all visitors . If media personnel would like to tour a prison facility, they should contact the Public Information Officer to coordinate a tour.

Family & Visitors

prisons insight

What prisons in new york have conjugal visits.

March 27, 2023

As of 2022, only four states in the US permit conjugal visits in their prisons, and New York is one of them. The New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervisions (DOCCS) still supports these visits through their Family Reunion Program (FRP). DOCCS recommends conjugal visits for several reasons, primarily to promote positive relationships between inmates and their families, and to enable inmates to stay up-to-date on their families’ situations before their release.

However, conjugal visits have been a contentious issue in the United States, and several states have discontinued their programs. In 1993, conjugal visits were permitted in 17 states, and the last state to close its program was New Mexico in 2016.

Despite the controversy, DOCCS continues to encourage conjugal visits as a means of maintaining family bonds and reducing recidivism rates. These visits are closely monitored and have specific eligibility criteria. Inmates must have exhibited good behavior, and their visitors must undergo background checks and adhere to strict rules during their visits.

Overview of conjugal visits in the New York State:

What to expect in a conjugal visit to new york, criteria of prisons in new york state to allow conjugal visits to happen:.

  • List of prisons in New York state that allows conjugal visits:

Family criteria for Conjugal Visits In New York State

The DOCCS’s Family Reunion Program, which permits conjugal visits, maintains that these visits are essential as they enable inmates to spend intimate time with their spouse or domestic partner.

According to the Family Reunion Program, conjugal visits serve several purposes, including fostering positive relationships between inmates and their families, reducing recidivism rates, and promoting responsible behavior among inmates. The program’s goals are achieved by facilitating visits in a controlled environment, providing counseling services to inmates and their families, and ensuring that all visitors undergo background checks and comply with the program’s guidelines.

The Family Reunion Program implemented by DOCCS recognizes the importance of preserving and strengthening family ties that have been disrupted due to incarceration, and conjugal visits are a key component in achieving this goal.

  • Research has shown that conjugal programs foster positive and responsible conduct in inmates.
  • These visits provide inmates with an opportunity to maintain intimate relationships with their partners, which helps to reduce stress and promote mental well-being.
  • Additionally, conjugal visits have been found to have positive effects on inmates’ behavior, including reducing disciplinary infractions and promoting rehabilitation.

The DOCCS Family Reunion Program enforces strict guidelines regarding the location of conjugal visits. The majority of these visits occur within the confines of 23 correctional facilities that allow for such visits to take place. These visits typically occur within well-furnished rooms, trailers, or cabins, which are equipped with board games and cards to pass the time.

Each facility has two rooms available for conjugal visits, with most visits lasting no longer than 24 hours. However, exceptional cases may be entertained, extending the duration to up to 48 hours.

Before entering the cabin or room, family members must undergo extreme scrutiny, and the DOCCS Family Reunion Program provides a list of approved items that can be brought in. As a result, visitors usually bring only essential items such as food, basic clothing, and an itinerary. Occasionally, visitors may bring a gaming machine to help pass the time.

The DOCCS Family Reunion Program has stringent guidelines regarding the location of conjugal visits, with visits taking place within designated rooms in 23 correctional facilities. Despite these restrictions, visitors are provided with basic amenities to make their stay as comfortable as possible, and the program permits some personal items while maintaining a high level of security.

To understand the criteria for conjugal visits in New York State prisons, it is important to consider the rulings of the US Supreme Court and Federal Courts on the matter.

Both courts have established that conjugal visits are a privilege rather than a constitutional right, granted only to prisoners who have demonstrated good behavior during their time in prison. Additionally, the courts have emphasized the need for strict regulation and have limited conjugal visits to the inmate’s blood relations.

The visits must take place within an enclosed cabin on prison grounds, though exceptionally well-behaved prisoners may be allowed to have visits in a public park. However, prisoners convicted of child or domestic abuse are ineligible for conjugal visits.

The DOCCS Family Reunion Program reflects these court rulings in establishing the eligibility criteria for conjugal visits in New York State prisons.

In order to be eligible for a conjugal visit through the DOCCS Family Reunion Program, certain criteria must be met.

  • Firstly, inmates must have served at least six months of their prison sentence before they can file an appeal for a conjugal visit to proceed. However, if the prisoner is transferred to a low-security prison, they may apply for a visit after waiting for 30 days. If the request is not accepted within 90 days, the inmate may reapply.
  • Secondly, the DOCCS Family Reunion Program aims to use conjugal visits as an opportunity for inmates to display good behavior throughout their entire prison term.
  • Therefore, any reports of disciplinary issues or misconduct may be used to reject the inmate’s application. It is essential that inmates refrain from engaging in any sort of fight or disciplinary issue to maintain their eligibility for a conjugal visit.

These criteria are critical components of the DOCCS Family Reunion Program’s eligibility requirements, which aim to ensure that the program is reserved for inmates who have demonstrated good behavior and have not engaged in any disciplinary issues.

  • Spouse: The DOCCS Family Reunion Program has specific eligibility requirements for legal spouses of inmates who wish to participate in conjugal visits. Firstly, the inmate must have been married to their spouse for at least six months before their arrest, and their spouse must have no criminal record. Additionally, spouses must possess valid documents during the time of their visit.

It is important to note that even if the family arrives at the conjugate cabin, the DOCCS Family Reunion Program reserves the right to reject the visit if they discover any issues with the eligibility requirements. This ensures that the program is reserved for legal spouses who meet all the eligibility criteria and that the program is not being misused in any way.

  • Children: Although it is rare, the DOCCS Family Reunion Program does allow children to participate in conjugal visits if they meet certain eligibility requirements. Firstly, children must be 18 years of age or above to participate. In the case of minors, they must be accompanied by an adult if their application is accepted.

However, unaccompanied minor visits may be allowed after a special review and with the approval of the superintendent. This ensures that the program is reserved for individuals who meet all eligibility requirements and that the safety and security of all parties involved are not compromised.

  • Grandparents: The DOCCS Family Reunion Program permits grandparents to participate in conjugal visits with the inmate.
  • Foster parents & guardians: In addition to legal spouses, children, and grandparents, the DOCCS Family Reunion Program also permits foster parents and guardians to participate in conjugal visits with the inmate. However, proper verification of their claims must be provided to ensure that only eligible individuals are allowed to participate in the program.
  • Nieces and Nephews: Under certain circumstances, the DOCCS Family Reunion Program may make special considerations to allow an inmate to meet their nieces and nephews who are above the age of 18. This is done on a case-by-case basis, and the eligibility criteria must be met before such visits are approved.
  • Siblings: Inmates are also allowed to meet their siblings.
  • Stepchildren: The DOCCS Family Reunion Program permits an inmate to meet their stepchildren, provided that a written statement from a non-custodial and biological parent is provided. The stepchildren must also be accompanied by their biological parents during the visit. This ensures that only eligible individuals are allowed to participate in the program and all necessary precautions are taken to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved.
  • Cousins and In-laws: In accordance with the DOCCS Family Reunion Program guidelines, an inmate is not permitted to meet with their cousins and in-laws, including their mother-in-law, brother-in-law, father-in-law, and sister-in-law. While inmates can request a special review for such cases, it is rare for such requests to be approved. In most cases, the DOCCS Family Reunion Program adheres strictly to its guidelines and policies to ensure the safety and security of all parties involved.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are conjugal visits in the context of prisons in new york.

Conjugal visits, also known as family reunion programs, allow inmates to spend extended private time with their legal spouses or domestic partners inside a designated cabin or room within the prison grounds.

Are conjugal visits a constitutional right for inmates in New York?

No, conjugal visits are not considered a constitutional right, but rather a privilege for well-behaved inmates.

Who is eligible for conjugal visits in New York prisons?

Inmates who have served at least six months of their sentence, exhibited good behavior throughout their incarceration, and have legal spouses or domestic partners with no criminal record are eligible for conjugal visits.

Can children visit during conjugal visits in New York prisons?

Generally, children under 18 are not allowed to visit during conjugal visits, but exceptions can be made in rare cases.

Who else can visit during conjugal visits in New York prisons?

Grandparents, foster parents, and legal guardians are allowed to visit if proper verification of their claims is provided. Stepchildren may also be allowed to visit if accompanied by their biological parents and with written consent from non-custodial biological parents.

Can an inmate meet their cousins or in-laws during conjugal visits in New York prisons?

No, cousins and in-laws, including mother-in-law, father-in-law, brother-in-law, and sister-in-law, are not allowed to visit during conjugal visits. Exceptions can be made through a special review, but it is often not approved.

the DOCCS Family Reunion Program provides the opportunity for conjugal visits to inmates in low-security prisons in the state of New York. However, there are strict eligibility criteria that must be met by both the inmate and their visitors, including having a legal marriage of at least six months, exhibiting good behavior during their time in prison, and passing strict background checks.

The program also has restrictions on which family members are eligible to visit, with blood relatives being given priority over other relatives. The conjugal visits are also subject to strict regulations and are usually limited to enclosed cabins or rooms within the prison grounds. While the program is not without controversy, it provides a means for inmates to maintain a connection with their families and loved ones during their time in prison.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Welcome to prisonsinsight.com , the premier website dedicated to providing valuable information and insights about the criminal justice system and the realities of incarceration.

Our team is made up of experts in the field of criminal justice, correctional facilities, and prisoner advocacy, all working together to provide the most comprehensive and up-to-date information available.

Latest news

How Do Technical Masterminds Foster A Culture Of Lifelong Learning And Continuous Improvement

How Do Technical Masterminds Foster A Culture Of Lifelong Learning And Continuous Improvement

February 23, 2024

How To Download Movie In Isaimini

How To Download Movie In Isaimini

February 21, 2024

How Does Dotmovies Handle Content Removals And Additions?

How Does Dotmovies Handle Content Removals And Additions?

February 16, 2024

Thank you for your interest in Prisons Insights. We are committed to providing our visitors with the highest quality information and resources on issues related to incarceration, the criminal justice system, and prison reform.

123 Main Street, Suite 456, Anytown, USA 12345

Phone: +1 (555) 123-4567

[email protected]

Copyright @ 2023 prisonsinsight.com

Privacy policy

Does Ohio Prisons Offer Conjugal Visits?

Does Ohio offer conjugal visits? Learn more about the prisons of Ohio on our Blog Prisonnfo

PrisonsInfo.com | We Have Information About Every US Prison

PrisonsInfo.com | We Have Information About Every US Prison

Does Ohio offer conjugal visits?

Ohio, the 7th largest state by population, operates 27 state prisons that are administered by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction (ODRC) which has a motto of “Reduce recidivism among those we touch.”

There are 27 state prisons in Ohio and its prison system is the sixth largest in the entire United States of America. This is why ODRC is a force to reckon with, it has 12,000+ active duty personnel and 8,000+ volunteers and has a prison system spending budget of $1.8 billion which is quite higher when compared with other states.

As a professional force, ODRC ensures each inmate serves their time per the sentence they have been awarded and are given proper rehabilitation programs so that when they go back to society, they are a dedicated member and provide services for the greater good.

There are multiple correctional programs that ORDC uses and each is different depending upon the kind of prison an inmate is sent to.

Conjugal visits in Ohio: Does Ohio offer conjugal visits?

Conjugal visits are a very hot topic in the United States of America and this is why only 4 states allow them to happen. As of 2022, the State of Ohio under the force of the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections does not offer conjugal visits to its inmates.

The 4 states that offer conjugal visits in the United States of America include New York, Washington, California, and Connecticut.

Interestingly the first US state to offer a conjugal visit was Mississippi, however, as time passed and the governors changed, Mississippi changed the laws, and, similar to Ohio, it also does not offer conjugal visits.

Are there any benefits for conjugal visits in Ohio?

Just like the entire subject of conjugal visits is well debated, the same goes with the benefits of conjugal visits and Ohio is no different. There is a petition on Change.Org which asks Governor Kasich to allow conjugal visits and offers several advantages. Still, so far the Governor has not allowed that to happen in his state.

Conjugal visits are said to help retain the family structures and can be helpful when a person is going back to society after serving a long sentence.

They are also believed to develop good character in an inmate due to two things: one being that conjugal visits are only offered to inmates who offer extremely good behavior therefore this gives the inmate an upper hand so that good behavior can be injected into them. Secondly, when the conjugal visit happens, it has been discovered that this adds a little hope to the inmate about their family’s past and they work even hard to be back with them once again.

However, many people believe it is unnecessary and since the purpose of the inmate is to “corrected” for the crime they have committed, giving them hopes of conjugal visits only hurts the victim more as they are not fully relieved that the deserving punishment will be given.

Therefore, everything can be added in the case of Ohio as criminals of Ohio are no different. Any decision to be made should be well reflected on the prison behavior and long term benefits for the state of Ohio which it lacks right now.

What does the Ohio law say about Conjugal visits?

As per the Lyons v. Gilligan (1974) , a sentence at the United States District Court for the Northern District of Ohio says that the prisoners or inmates have no constitutional rights to conjugal visits during a sentence with their spouse. The hearing also made it clear that as per US Constitution, a Conjugal visit is a privilege and is not a right.

The state of Ohio was approached by the inmates of the Marion, Ohio Correctional Institution where they brought out legal action against the state prison system of Ohio which required as per the eight amendments that conjugal visits are their right, however, the court disagreed to their statement and did not move in the direction to allow conjugal visits in Ohio.

What kinds of prisons are present in the state of Ohio?

There are 5 types of prison facilities that are present in the state of Ohio. Depending upon the nature of each prison, they are managed by a different authority and an inmate will be sent there. These prisons include:

  • State Prisons: State prisons are administered by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.
  • County Jails: County jails are administered by the Sheriff’s office but they do seek administrator services from ODRC.
  • Juvenile Facilities: Ohio has three different juvenile facilities which are operated and administered by the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Corrections.
  • Private Facilities: As of 2022, three different private facilities are operated by private companies that exist in Ohio.
  • Federal Prisons: Federal prisons in Ohio are for criminals that conduct a federal crime and are operated outside of the jurisdiction of ODRC.

What are the state prisons in Ohio?

There are 27 different state prisons in Ohio. These includes:

  • Allen Correctional Institution
  • Belmont Correctional Institution
  • Chillicothe Correctional Institution
  • Correctional Reception Center
  • Dayton Correctional Institution
  • Franklin Medical Center
  • Grafton Correctional Institution
  • Hocking Correctional Facility
  • Lebanon Correctional Institution
  • London Correctional Institution
  • Lorain Correctional Institution
  • Madison Correctional Institution
  • Mansfield Correctional Institution
  • Marion Correctional Institution
  • Noble Correctional Institution
  • Northeast Reintegration Center
  • Ohio Reformatory for Women
  • Ohio State Penitentiary
  • Pickaway Correctional Institution
  • Richland Correctional Institution
  • Ross Correctional Institution
  • Southeastern Correctional Institution
  • Southern Ohio Correctional Facility
  • Toledo Correctional Institution
  • Trumbull Correctional Institution
  • Warren Correctional Institution

What are the private prisons in Ohio?

There are three different private prisons in Ohio. These include:

  • Lake Erie Correctional Institution:

It is a maximum and medium level security prison which is operated by CoreCivic.

The private prison can house 1,498 inmates and is located at 501 Thompson Road, Conneaut, Ohio.

  • North Central Correctional Complex:

It is a maximum and medium level security prison which is operated by Management and Training Corporation.

The private prison is located at 670 Marion Williamsport Road East Marion, Ohio. It has a capacity of 2,893 inmates and was opened in 1994.

  • Northeast Ohio Correctional Center:

It is a medium-security prison that is operated by CoreCivic.

The private prison has a capacity of 2,016 inmates and was opened at 2240 Hubbard Road, Youngstown, Ohio.

What are Juvenile Facilities in Ohio?

Ohio has three different juvenile facilities. These include:

  • Circleville Juvenile Correctional Facility:

The facility serves male youth. It offers multiple programs in accredited high school, behavioral health services, recreation, religious services, community service opportunities, and reentry services.

  • Cuyahoga Hills Juvenile Correctional Facility:

The facility serves male youth. It offers multiple programs and targets a variety of issues such as anger, aggression, violence, depression, anxiety, self-injury, sleep disturbances, and more. The goal is to ensure the male youth after servicing in this facility can go back to society and be successful in their life.

  • Indian River Juvenile Correctional Facility:

The facility serves male youth and offers unique programs that include special living units, parenting programs, and staff-youth mentoring programs.

What prisons are closed in Ohio?

As of 2022, 5 different prisons are closed in Ohio. These prisons include:

  • Lima Correctional Institution
  • North Coast Correctional Treatment Facility
  • Ohio Penitentiary Correctional Facility
  • Ohio State Reformatory
  • Orient Correctional Institution

Read more articles about Prisons in the United States:

  • Level 1, level 2, level 3, level 4, and Level 5 Prisons In Virginia
  • Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Level 4, Level 5 Prisons in Ohio
  • Byrd Unit Texas: Everything You Need To Know About This Facility
  • List of Maximum security prisons in the New York State
  • Segovia Unit Brief Overview Visiting Hours, Inmate Phones, And Location

prison have conjugal visits

  • International edition
  • Australia edition
  • Europe edition

'Lucy' at her home in a slum in Kolkata, India

‘The staff get hush money’: the hidden scandal of rape in Indian prisons

Female prisoners are ‘supplied’ to male inmates of West Bengal jails, sexual abuse is commonplace and hundreds of children are born in prison. But the women are too scared to speak out

W hen Tapas Kumar Bhanja was appointed to investigate conditions in West Bengal’s overcrowded prisons in 1990, he was not prepared for what he discovered. Women in prisons were being sexually abused by male inmates, according to the now 66-year-old lawyer. Many of the survivors gave birth after the assaults.

Lucy (not her real name) was 13 when the well-to-do family she worked for as a domestic help reported her to the police, alleging theft. “It was almost 25 years ago,” says Lucy, who has a speech disability and holds up her fingers to indicate the numbers.

After being held for a month in an adult prison, Lucy was taken in a police van to appear in court, escorted by two police officials.

On the way back from the court, Lucy was gagged and blindfolded and raped by the two police officials and the driver of the van. She motions to show that she froze when they pinned her down and took off her clothes.

After the authorities were notified she was transferred to a government shelter. Eight months later, Lucy gave birth to a daughter.

T hirty-four years after starting his first investigation, at the request of the Calcutta high court, Bhanja says the plight of women in Indian prisons may be even worse now. “Sexual abuse of incarcerated women is still a reality in West Bengal,” says Bhanja.

“Women are being sexually assaulted in custody. As recently as in early 2020, over a dozen incarcerated women I interviewed in West Bengal told me privately that they were all assaulted in custody and became pregnant.”

West Bengal has only one prison exclusively for women, known as a “correctional home”. Elsewhere in the state, the 1,885 or so female prisoners are kept in sections of men’s prisons, where wealthy or powerful inmates often have privileges that allow them access to other areas.

A bald Indian man wearing a lawyer’s gown standing outside an grand neo-gothic Victorian building

The abuse starts on the day the women are sent to prison, according to Bhanja, as they pass through the male wards to enter the female enclosures.

On 8 February, Bhanja presented his findings – based on hundreds of interviews with female prisoners – to the high court in Kolkata in a formal request for judicial intervention known as a writ petition . The next day, the Indian supreme court expressed concerns over his report.

Bhanja described the conditions prisoners in the state were living under as “inhuman”, citing instances such as the murder of a man in custody, evidence regarding torture in prisons being concealed.

He also noted claims that female inmates were becoming pregnant while in custody and giving birth in prison, despite there being no law that allows conjugal visits to prisoners.

“As of January, this year, there were 196 children living with their incarcerated mothers across West Bengal prisons,” says Bhanja, citing figures shared with him by the state government after he was made “ amicus curiae ”, or expert adviser, to the Calcutta high court in 2018.

W hen the supreme court requested further information, the West Bengal Correctional Services reported that 62 children had been born in the state’s prisons between January 2020 and last December. Most women were pregnant when they arrived and others became pregnant while on brief periods of parole, the authorities claimed.

The state government has described Bhanja’s allegations as a “slur” on female prisoners. Laxmi Narayan Meena, additional director general of correctional services in West Bengal, calls the allegations “incorrect, motivated and demeaning”.

Bhanja says the authorities refuse to accept that the prison system enables sexual abuse. “Many heads will roll if these abuses come out in the open,” he says. “Members of the prison staff get large sums of hush money regularly from the convict officers.”

The lawyer says “complete reform” is required to prevent the sexual abuse of female inmates in India, including setting up women-only prisons.

His call for mandatory pregnancy tests for women entering prison – to rule out the possibility of sexual abuse while in custody – was rejected by the Calcutta high court on 21 February on the grounds that it violated the women’s privacy.

Pallabi Ghosh, the founder of the anti-trafficking charity Impact and Dialogue Foundation, says sexual violence towards female prisoners is “very, very common”.

“One of the trafficking survivors I worked with was formerly held in a prison in India – but outside West Bengal. She said that the women inmates there, including her, were regularly ‘supplied’ to powerful male inmates.

“However, it is terribly difficult to gather any kind of data in this area,” says Ghosh. “Women who have been sexually abused in custody are too terrified to speak out. They fear violent retaliation by those in power – the ones who abused them.”

after newsletter promotion

On a recent visit to the Alipore Women’s Correctional Home in Kolkata, Bhanja found 15 children and one pregnant woman. He says the women were too scared to tell him if they got pregnant while in custody, but confirmed that their children had been born in prison.

“If the women overtly talk about their abuse to authorities, they will face serious reprisal. They are at the risk of further torture within the prisons by convict officers, and social stigma outside, if they are later released. That is why none of the women report such abuse to authorities directly,” says Bhanja.

“Based on three decades of experience interviewing incarcerated women in this state, I strongly suspect that most women inmates who give birth in prisons in West Bengal do so after getting pregnant while in custody.

A ryeh Neier, an American human rights activist who co-wrote a 1991 report on prison conditions in India , documenting the gruelling reality of rape in custody and consequent pregnancies, says he is not surprised to learn that the abuses he reported more than three decades ago are still prevalent.

“Those abuses include the sexual exploitation of many female detainees as well as some male detainees. Over the years, there have been several scathing reports on India’s prisons and jails. These do not seem to lead to significant changes.

“This should be a source of national embarrassment,” says Neier, who co-founded Human Rights Watch.

An India man cycles past the gate of a prison, painted turquoise

A 2018 report on female prisoners by the Ministry of Women and Child Development says that violence against incarcerated women – “including sexual violence by inmates and authorities” – had been reported all over the country.

“However, official reports remain underestimated due to fear in prisoners of retaliation as they are forced to stay in the same place as their perpetrators,” the report said.

Experts say the most economically or socially marginalised women are far more vulnerable to sexual abuse in custody.

“There are rigid power dynamics in place in prisons. The hierarchy makes women belonging to marginalised communities targets for sexual predators,” says an official from a Delhi-based organisation, who prefers to stay anonymous due to the “sensitivity of the issue”.

W hen Lucy was raped, according to court records, fellow inmates realised what had happened to her and alerted the authorities. A medical examination confirmed the assault – and also revealed the fact that Lucy was a child.

“No one had bothered to find out before,” according to Lucy.

Her attackers were arrested and charged. While one of the accused died in custody, the other two were acquitted a decade later.

Asked if she feels justice was delivered in her case, Lucy shakes her head. She points to herself and then shrugs. Sitting by her side, her 65-year-old uncle Gabriel says: “No one cares about the pain of poor people like her – poor people like us.”

In the tiny one-bedroom home that she shares with three other family members in a crowded Kolkata slum, Lucy, a Christian, turns to a makeshift altar and puts her hands together in prayer.

  • Global development
  • Sexual violence
  • South and central Asia
  • Women's rights and gender equality
  • Human rights

Most viewed

IMAGES

  1. Conjugal Visits and Prison History

    prison have conjugal visits

  2. Conjugal Prison Visits in Australia

    prison have conjugal visits

  3. Female Prison Conjugal Visits

    prison have conjugal visits

  4. Female Prison Conjugal Visits

    prison have conjugal visits

  5. A Corrections Officer on What Really Happens During Conjugal Visits

    prison have conjugal visits

  6. Inmates granted holiday conjugal visits

    prison have conjugal visits

COMMENTS

  1. States That Allow Conjugal Visits

    In 1993, 17 states had conjugal visitation programs. By the 2000s, that number was down to six, with only California, Connecticut, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, and Washington allowing such visits. And by 2015, Mississippi and New Mexico eliminated their programs. For the most part, states no longer refer to "conjugal" visits.

  2. Conjugal visit

    A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor. The visitor is usually their legal spouse. The generally recognized basis for permitting such visits in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner's eventual return to ordinary life after release ...

  3. Which states allow conjugal visits?

    Conjugal visits and family visits are the first two methods named by the prison commissioner, never mind that I have yet to find any evidence that Florida ever allowed those kinds of visits. Often, the excuse for policing visits so strictly is that drugs can be exchanged.

  4. An Incarcerated Journalist Explains Conjugal Visits and What Sex in

    I first heard about the trailers, prison vernacular for conjugal visits, on Rikers Island. It was 2002, I was twenty-four, and I was awaiting trial on murder charges.

  5. How Do Conjugal Visits Work?

    Benefits of Conjugal Visits. Once a normal aspect of the prison system, conjugal visits and the moments that prisoners have with their families are now an indulgence to only a few prisoners in the system. Many prison officials cite huge costs and no indications of reduced recidivism rates among reasons for its prohibition.

  6. What's The Deal With Conjugal Visits In Prison?

    Conjugal visits are usually only allowed in medium security or lower prisons, and are now allowed for prisoners convicted of sexual assaults. But each state has its own rules: Only New York and California, for example, allow same-sex conjugal visits. And in Connecticut, according to Thrillist, a spouse or partner is required to visit with the ...

  7. Joran van der Sloot's Conjugal Visits in Peru Stir Controversy Amid U.S

    Joran van der Sloot, the convicted murderer of Natalee Holloway and Stefany Flores, has sparked international controversy with his entitlement to conjugal visits in a Peruvian prison. Granted under Peruvian law as a right for inmates' mental health and rehabilitation, these visits highlight significant differences in prisoner rights between ...

  8. The Process and Regulations for Conducting Conjugal Visits in ...

    Conjugal. What a weird word. It means relating to marriage or a married couple. So, a conjugal visit is a visit between married people. Regular married couples have conjugal visits every day, but what about when one person in the marriage is in prison? Are they allowed to spend quality time with their spouses? This … The Process and Regulations for Conducting Conjugal Visits in State Prisons ...

  9. What is a Conjugal Visit and Do California Prisons Offer Them?

    Conjugal visits were originally introduced in Mississippi state in the early 1900s. At the time, inmates were essentially just used as slaves, even physically beaten if they broke the rules or failed to work hard enough. To provide positive encouragement for those who worked hard and followed the rules, the prison brought prostitutes for the ...

  10. Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic

    Imprisonment impacts on lives beyond the prisoner's. In particular, family and intimate relationships are affected. Only some countries permit private conjugal visits in prison between a prisoner and community living partner. Aims. Our aim was to find evidence from published international literature on the safety, benefits or harms of such visits.

  11. Conjugal Visits

    In every state that offers extended visits, good prison behavior is a prerequisite, and inmates convicted of sex crimes or domestic violence, or who have life sentences, are typically excluded. ... Conjugal visits began around 1918 at Parchman Farm, a labor camp in Mississippi. At first, the visits were for black prisoners only, and the ...

  12. Conjugal Visitation in American Prisons Today

    American courts have almost unanimously refused to declare that any class of incarcerated persons is entitled to conjugal visitation rights. Only one court decision has declared that any such right exists. However, demands are still made in the courts for the implementation of conjugal visitation programs. Evolving standards of what constitutes ...

  13. Conjugal Visiting in United States Prisons

    proponents of conjugal visitations have emphasized public education concerning the effects of denying such visitations. they also need to convince penal administrators that their fears of public opposition are mistaken so that courts will find it easier to recognize a legal responsibility in the prison systems to provide conjugal visits.

  14. BOP: How to visit a federal inmate

    General Visiting Information. Make sure your visit will be a success by carefully following these four steps. Locate the inmate. Discover or confirm the whereabouts of the inmate you would like to visit. Be Approved. Before you can visit you must be placed on the inmate's approved visiting list. Be Prepared.

  15. Controversy and Conjugal Visits

    "The words 'conjugal visit' seem to have a dirty ring to them for a lot of people," a man named John Stefanisko wrote for The Bridge, a quarterly at the Connecticut Correctional Institution at Somers, in December 1963.This observation marked the beginning of a long campaign—far longer, perhaps, than the men at Somers could have anticipated—for conjugal visits in the state of ...

  16. 9 Arresting Facts About Conjugal Visits

    6. PRISONERS IN INDIA HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT, NOT PRIVILEGE, TO BEAR CHILDREN. In 2015, India's government passed legislation stating that conjugal visits are a right, not a privilege, for married ...

  17. Conjugal Visits

    The very first prison to allow conjugal visits was Parchman Farm (now Mississippi State Penitentiary).. Parchman farm began as a labor prison camp for black men in Mississippi which was a blatant attempt to keep slavery alive 50 years after the end of the Civil War.. Prison authorities believed that if black men were allowed to have sexual intercourse, they would be more productive.

  18. Conjugal Visit Laws by State 2024

    Connecticut and Washington have similar programs within their prison systems, referring to conjugal visits as extended family visits. Of course, the focus has been to take the stigma away from conjugal visits as a means of procreation, a short time, and a privilege as a result of good behavior. Extended family visits are much more wholesome and ...

  19. Research Finds that Conjugal Visits Correlate with ...

    While sexual violence occurred in state prison systems that prohibit conjugal visits at an average rate of 226 incidents per 100,000 prisoners, it occurred almost four times less frequently in the five states that permitted such visits - 57 per 100,000 prisoners. ... "Conjugal visits have been a privilege," noted Mississippi DOC ...

  20. Natalee Holloway killer Joran van der Sloot having sex with three

    Van der Sloot is currently being held at the notorious Ancon 1 prison north of Lima. Over the years and at two different facilities, seven different women have been approved for conjugal visits ...

  21. Conjugal Rights for Prisoners: To Be Or Not To Be?

    The applicant sought a declaration that the refusal of the respondents to allow for conjugal visits to the prison breached the fundamental rights of both convicted and awaiting trial inmates. Also, the Parliament's committee on Human Rights in Uganda tasked the Commissioner General of Prisons, Dr. Johnson Byabashaija to explain why prisoners ...

  22. Peru allows Natalee Holloway's killer multiple conjugal visits for his

    In the United States, only California, Connecticut, New York and Washington currently allow conjugal visits for inmates - as a privilege and not a right, according to David Gelman, a New Jersey ...

  23. 'Playboy' murderer who killed schoolgirl, 18, is having sex with 3

    He has had access to many women over the years and at two different facilities. A total of seven different women have been approved for conjugal visits with Van der Sloot, including his ex-wife ...

  24. Prison Visits

    DOC 450.300 Visits for Incarcerated Individuals is applicable to all types of prison visits. Please note visitors whom are 18 years of age and older must present a valid, current photo identification at the time of the visit (i.e., driver's license or state issued identification card, international visitors must present their passport).

  25. What Prisons in New York Have Conjugal Visits?

    However, conjugal visits have been a contentious issue in the United States, and several states have discontinued their programs. In 1993, conjugal visits were permitted in 17 states, and the last state to close its program was New Mexico in 2016. ... However, if the prisoner is transferred to a low-security prison, they may apply for a visit ...

  26. What Prisons in New York Have Conjugal Visits?

    However, in the United States of America, conjugal visits are a subject of massive controversy and the reason why slowly many states have closed their programs. In 1993, 17 states allowed conjugal visits, and the last one to close was New Mexico in 2016. Overview of conjugal visits in the New York State:

  27. Does Ohio Prisons Offer Conjugal Visits?

    There are multiple correctional programs that ORDC uses and each is different depending upon the kind of prison an inmate is sent to. Conjugal visits in Ohio: Does Ohio offer conjugal visits? Conjugal visits are a very hot topic in the United States of America and this is why only 4 states allow them to happen. As of 2022, the State of Ohio ...

  28. 'The staff get hush money': the hidden scandal of rape in Indian

    After being held for a month in an adult prison, Lucy was taken in a police van to appear in court, escorted by two police officials. In January there were 196 children living with their ...