does texas prisons allow conjugal visits

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Contact Visits For Texas Inmates

What are contact visits in texas prisons.

Contact visits for Texas inmates are face-to-face meetings between inmates and their loved ones without physical barriers, allowing for limited physical contact. In Texas, both jails and prisons have specific rules and regulations governing contact visits, including eligibility criteria, scheduling, and procedures.

Eligibility for Contact Visits for Texas Prison Inmates

Inmate classification and behavior.

Inmates must be classified as minimum or medium custody and maintain a good disciplinary record. Inmates with disciplinary infractions or a history of violence may be denied contact visits.

Visitor Approval Process

Visitors must be approved by the  Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ)  before being allowed to make visitation information and participate in contact visits. This involves submitting a visitation application and undergoing a background check. Only approved visitors, such as immediate family members and close friends, will be allowed to participate in contact visits for Texas inmates.

Are Conjugal Visits Allowed in Texas?

Conjugal visits, also known as extended family visits or private family visits, are visits that allow inmates in prison to spend time with their spouses or significant others in a private, home-like setting. These visits are typically unsupervised and can last for several hours or even days, depending on the jurisdiction and the specific rules governing the visits.

Current Status Of Conjugal Visits In Texas Prisons

As of now, Texas does not allow conjugal visits for inmates in its  state prisons . The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) has consistently maintained a policy against allowing these visits, citing concerns over safety, security, and costs associated with implementing such a program.

Procedures for Contact Visits in Texas Prisons

Scheduling contact visits.

Once a visitor has been approved, they must schedule their contact visit. Contact visits for Texas inmates in prison are typically held on weekends and holidays, with a limited number of slots available. It is essential to schedule your visit in advance to ensure a spot.

Rules And Regulations For Contact Visits For Texas Inmates

During contact visits, both the visitor and the inmate must follow strict rules to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved. These rules may include:

• Dress code requirements for visitors
• Restrictions on items brought into the visitation area
• Limited physical contact, such as brief hugs and handshakes

Violating these rules may result in the termination of the visit or loss of contact visitation privileges.

Are conjugal visits allowed for Texas inmates?

No, conjugal visits are not allowed for Texas inmates. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) does not permit conjugal visits, which are private visits between an inmate and their spouse, typically for the purpose of maintaining intimate relationships. In Texas, only contact visits are allowed, and these visits have strict rules and limitations, including restrictions on physical contact and  online video visitation .

Do Texas inmates ever get privacy with visitors?

In Texas, inmates do not get privacy with visitors during regular visits, including contact visits. Visits are closely monitored by correctional staff to ensure the safety and security of everyone involved. In contact visits, there may be limited physical contact allowed, such as brief hugs and handshakes, but there is no privacy provided for inmates and their visitors. This restriction is in place to prevent contraband exchange and other security risks associated with private visits.

Were conjugal visits ever allowed for Texas inmates?

Conjugal visits were never allowed for Texas inmates. TDCJ has not permitted conjugal visits in its history. Texas only allows contact visits, which are face-to-face meetings between inmates and their loved ones without physical barriers, but with strict rules and limitations for special visits, including restrictions on physical contact. The rationale behind not allowing conjugal visits in Texas, as in many other states, includes concerns about security risks, potential contraband exchange, and the cost of maintaining facilities and staff for such visits.

What states allow conjugal visits?

Only a few states in the United States allow conjugal visits, also known as extended family visits or private family visits. These states are:

• Connecticut

It is essential to note that policies regarding conjugal visits may change over time, and each state may have its specific eligibility requirements and regulations. Before planning a conjugal visit, check the most recent policies and guidelines provided by the respective state’s department of corrections.

What type of items can visitors bring for Texas inmates?

Visitors are generally not allowed to bring items directly to inmates during visits at Texas correctional facilities. However, there are specific items that may be allowed in the visitation area for the visitors’ use during the visit. These prohibited items may include:

• A small wallet or clear plastic bag containing identification, car keys, and a small amount of cash or coins for vending machines, if available.
• Necessary medications, such as asthma inhalers, nitroglycerin tablets, or EpiPens, in their original containers, with prior approval from the facility.
• Baby care items for visitors with infants, such as diapers, wipes, and a baby bottle, in a clear plastic bag. The items should be the minimum necessary for the visit’s duration.

It is crucial to check the specific rules and regulations for the jail or prison you plan to visit, as each facility may have its guidelines regarding items allowed during visitation.

Most Texas correctional facilities have a  commissary system , where friends and family members can deposit money into an inmate’s account, allowing the inmate to purchase approved items such as food, personal hygiene products, and stationery.

FAQs: Texas Inmate Visitation

A contact visit is a face-to-face meeting between an inmate and an approved visitor without physical barriers, allowing for limited physical contact.

You must submit a visitation application and undergo a background check by the TDCJ. Only immediate family members and close friends may be approved for contact visits.

Contact visits are typically held on weekends and holidays, with a limited number of slots available.

No, only inmates classified as minimum or medium custody and with a good disciplinary record are eligible for contact visits.

Rules for contact visits may include dress code requirements, restrictions on items brought into the visitation area, and limits on physical contact between inmates and visitors.

Violating contact visit rules may result in the termination of the visit or loss of contact visitation privileges.

Once you are an approved visitor, you must schedule your contact visit in advance, typically through the prison’s visitation office.

Yes, contact visits can be denied for various reasons, such as the inmate’s disciplinary record, visitor background check results, or if visitation rules are violated.

If you believe your visitation rights have been violated, reach out to an experienced criminal defense attorney to help you understand and assert your rights.

Call Varghese Summersett today at 817-203-2220 or contact us online for expert legal assistance regarding visitation rights and procedures.

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Only 4 States Allow Conjugal Visits, Does Texas Make The List?

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Believe it or not, the popularity of conjugal visits is on the decline. In fact, only 4 states allow them in 2023.

Conjugal visits happen during a scheduled period of time, in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor.

The point of a conjugal visit? I mean... the point is to get physical. It allows spouses of prisoners to have intimate contact with their partners. Some call it "sex" but we are keeping PG-13 today.

According to criminaldefenselawyer.com , prisoners who maintain close ties with spouses, partners, and family members are more likely to successfully reenter society upon release and less likely to commit crimes. A number of studies support this common-sense conclusion.

In spite of the evidence from these studies, most states no longer allow conjugal visits. In fact - for the most part, states no longer refer to "conjugal" visits. Most choose to use "family time" or "contact visits."

Here are the 4 states left that allow a variation of "conjugal" visits and what they choose to call them. Unfortunately, if you're locked up in Texas, you won't be getting any action behind bars down here.

California = "contact visits" Connecticut = "extended family visits" Washington = "extended family visits" New York = "family reunion program"

In 1993, 17 states had conjugal visitation programs. By the 2000s, that number was down to 6, with only California, Connecticut, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, and Washington allowing such visits. By 2015, Mississippi and New Mexico had eliminated their programs.

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

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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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 .

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Extending the Ties that Bind: Considering the Implementation of Extended Family Visits in Prisons

Thomas dutcher university of new haven.

The following brief presents valuable information for states considering implementing extended familial visitations to their current visitation policies within prisons. Specifically this report would be of interest to individuals within a given states’ Department of Corrections. The brief first outlines what is known about extended stay family visitations (also known as conjugal visitations) in relation to recidivism prevention, prison violence reduction, and maintenance of social ties. Thereafter, policies of states with current programs are reviewed. The brief recommends that states adopt a visitation policy, which allows for a broad definition of who qualifies as a visitor capable of applying for an extended visitation, and recommends considering the use of a monitoring and evaluation framework paired with the implementation of a program due to the limited current state of evidence-based literature on the topic.

Statement of Issue  

Roughly 45% of the United States population has had an incarcerated primary family member, and every state has some form of in-person visitation policy, but the vast majority of incarcerated persons will not receive visits from family (Cochran & Mears, 2013; Enns et al., 2019; Mitchell et al., 2016). The extant quantitative literature on the effects of familial visitation on the incarcerated person finds that visitations increase overall mood, increase reports of familial ties, decrease rule violation behavior, reduce the likelihood of recidivism. Yet it is important to note that within these studies, it is rare for more than 40% of those incarcerated individuals to report receiving any visits, let alone visits from family members (De Claire & Dixon, 2017; Duwe & Clark, 2013; Mears et al., 2012; Mitchell et al., 2016).

While visitation and maintaining familial ties are seen as theoretically relevant for reducing recidivism by reducing strain, strengthening familial ties, and combatting labeling associated with prisonization, there are significant barriers to visitation (Cochran & Mears, 2013). These barriers include distance to be traveled (often hundreds of miles), cost of travel, poor conditions in the general visiting area, length of visit, inconsistency in hours of allowable visit, length of time spent waiting at the facility, and the overarching cost of the experience (Christian, 2005; Cochran & Mears, 2013; Mowen & Visher, 2016).

With this in mind, this policy brief seeks to explore one way for addressing low in-person familial visitation rates. In the section that follows, a background on extended familial or “conjugal” visits will be provided. As of 2021, only four states have official extended familial visitation programs: Connecticut (Connecticut Department of Correction Directive 10.6), California (see Boudin et al., 2013), New York (DOC Dir 4500), and Washington (DOC 590.100). Extended familial visits, while not a panacea to low prison visitation, address many of the barriers to visitation shown in the existing literature.

Prison visitation has received a great deal of attention from researchers in the past 20 years. This research tends to show that visitation has a positive impact on the lives of those incarcerated, as well as the individuals visiting (Duwe & Clark, 2013; Mears et al., 2012; Mitchell et al., 2016; Tasca et al., 2016). Rather than detailing the key findings of the literature, the focus of this brief is placed on two separate meta-analyses of prison visitation research, along with a few routinely cited studies. This overarching literature will be used to introduce the limited research that has been conducted on extended familial (conjugal) visitations. While most of this research focuses on the effects of visitation on recidivism, it should be noted that an entirely separate body of research focuses on the effects of visitation for families on the outside (see: Adams, 2018; Christian, 2005; Mowen & Visher, 2016;; Siennick et al., 2013; Turanovic et al., 2012)

One meta-analysis conducted by De Claire & Dixon (2017) examined 10 studies that specifically looked at the effects of familial and romantic partner visitation related to the overall mood and disposition of the incarcerated person, instances of violations in prison, and recidivism. The authors found support for their hypothesis that visits from family improve mood, decrease in-prison violations, and decrease recidivism risk (De Claire & Dixon, 2017). However, differences exist related to the gender of the incarcerated individual. For example, visitation only reduced recidivism at a statistically significant level for men, not women (Claire & Dixon, 2017). The researchers noted that there needs to be further studies that examine the nuances of types of visitation, including extended familial visitation, and their effect on recidivism and in prison violations.

Mitchell et al. (2016), in another meta-analysis of the effects of prison visitation specific to recidivism outcomes, examined studies of 16 prison visitation programs that used either an experimental or quasi-experimental design. This meta-analysis found that prison visitation reduces recidivism by 26%, but that gender (larger effect for men than women), type of visit, and length of incarceration mediate the effect (Mitchell et al., 2016). Despite this mediation, the effect of visitation remained moderately significant. Unique to this meta-analysis was the inclusion of extended familial (conjugal) visits as a visitation type.  While it should be noted that far fewer studies in the meta-analysis were used to test the effect of these visits, the results of this study show that extended familial visits had the strongest effect on recidivism of any type of visitation, reducing recidivism by 36% (Mitchell et al., 2016).

Research specifically examining the effects of extended family (conjugal) visitation is hard to locate in the extant literature. The evaluative studies which do exist have focused almost exclusively on the extended visit program in the state of Mississippi, which ended in 2014 (McElreath et al., 2016). Research examining extended visitations generally includes discussions of now defunct programs (such as the aforementioned Mississippi program), in large part because the extant literature does not extend beyond 2014 (see Boudin et al., 2013; Carlson & Cevera, 1991; D’Alessio et al., 2013; Einat & Rabinovitz, 2013; Hensley et al., 2000, 2002). This prior research largely paints a positive picture of this form of visitation.

Hensley et al. (2000), surveying currently incarcerated persons in two facilities in Mississippi (126 men and 130 women), sought to examine if those that received extended familial (conjugal) visits had different views on the program than those who were eligible but did not participate. It is important to note that this study oversampled those receiving extended family visits, as 53% of their sample received this form of visit, whereas only 7% of the prison population received extended family visits (Hensley et al., 2000). Using logistic regression, this study found that there were no statistically significant differences in the opinions of extended visitations between those who did and did not receive them (Hensley et al., 2000). Both those who did and did not receive extended visits were in favor of the practice (Hensley et al., 2000).

Hensely et al. (2002) sought to examine the effects of extended family visits on the threat of, as well as actual acts of violent assault and sexual violence. In this study, extended family (conjugal) visits were coded as a dichotomous yes/no variable.  Using multiple regression, the researchers found that while extended family (conjugal) visits decreased threats and actual acts of violence/sexual violence for incarcerated women in the sample, this difference was not statistically significant. Additionally, this study found that extended family (conjugal) visits had no overall effect on violence scales employed (measuring threats and acts) (Hensley et al., 2002).

However, these null findings are in contrast to the majority of the extant literature, which finds positive effects of extended familial (conjugal) visitation (D’Alessio et al., 2013; De Claire & Dixon, 2017; Einat & Rabinovitz, 2013; Mears et al., 2012; Mitchell et al., 2016). D’Alessio et al. (2013), for example, in examining the rates of a reported inmate to inmate sexual assaults in all 50 states over three years, found that conjugal visitation was a statistically significant factor that reduced instances of sexual assault within men’s facilities. In other words, states with specific policies that allowed for extended familial (conjugal) visitation had lower reported rates of sexual abuse in their prisons. However, it must be mentioned again that since the time of this study, both Mississippi and New Mexico have ended their visitation programs.

Qualitative research has delved deeper into the perceptions of extended visits through the perspective of incarcerated persons. In studying perceptions of visitation experiences for incarcerated men, Pierce (2015) found that extended family visits were incredibly important to the 32 men in their sample for maintaining social bonds with their loved ones. Extended visits were mentioned as being preferred for their relative privacy and reportedly produced more meaningful visitation experiences for these men. Pierce (2015) found that continuing extended family visitations, improving the conditions of the trailers, and increasing the number of trailers to facilitate more frequent extended visits per eligible party were among the primary recommendations made by men for facilitating stronger familial ties. Additionally, Einat & Rabinovitz, (2013) examined the importance of “conjugal” visits for eight incarcerated women in Israel. Similarly, these women reflected on the importance of one-on-one visits to maintain deep connections with their romantic partners, which went beyond simply engaging in sex (Einat & Rabinovitz, 2013). The privacy and intimacy of non-traditional visits led individuals in both studies to assert extended visits were more beneficial to their familial relationships than a standard visit (Einat & Rabinovitz, 2013; Pierce, 2015).

Pre-existing policies

While all states have various regulations regarding the length of visitation, type of visit allowed (contact or no contact), and who may visit, all 50 states have a formal policy regulating prison visitation (Boudin et al., 2013). While most states have special policies allowing for extended visits, these extensions are seldom for longer than a few hours during the day. They also vary across states in terms of length of the extension and what type of visitor can request an extended visit (Boudin et al., 2013). Existing policies on these variations in day-time-hour-based extended visits also vary by state and are not possible to recount in detail. Of particular interest is the overnight extended stay visit (often referred to as a familial visit or conjugal visit). As of 2014, when New Mexico and Mississippi canceled their programs, 46 states have no formal policy that allows incarcerated individuals to engage in a private overnight stay with any familial visitor (Boudin et al., 2013) . The policies of Connecticut, New York, and Washington will be outlined below, with a focus on the unique or differing dimensions of each policy.

Extended Options: Connecticut

In the state of Connecticut, incarcerated persons are eligible for a 24-hour extended family visit from their child (under 18) and their spouse, the child's guardian, or the parent of the incarcerated person (Connecticut Department of Correction Directive 10.6). Unique to this policy is the mandate that the incarcerated person must be visited by two persons, one of whom must be their child. Incarcerated persons are eligible for a visit every 90-days. A set of eligibility guidelines exists for both the visitors and the incarcerated person. These eligibility guidelines for the incarcerated person mandate that they must not be on a restrictive status, must not have high-class disciplinary offenses, must have been incarcerated for at least 90 days, and must be in good health (Connecticut Department of Correction Directive 10.6) . Extended family visits occur on Saturdays and Wednesdays, beginning at 8:30 in the morning and ending at 8:30 the next day (Connecticut Department of Correction Directive 10.6). These visits cost ten dollars and are conducted in private trailers that are “similar to a two-bedroom apartment” (Connecticut Department of Correction Directive 10.6, p. 7) . Each facility in the state is capable of setting its own specific eligibility guidelines for both visitors and incarcerated individuals, in addition to the general rules set forth by the Connecticut Department of Corrections

Unlike the Connecticut state policy, which requires a child present in order for the extended stay visit to occur, the policies in New York, Washington, and California do not have this provision. Similar among all three policies are the extensive documents required by the visitor, to establish their identity and connection to the incarcerated person they are seeking to visit, as well as a lengthy application process that includes providing medical, legal, and background records . In all three states, a committee makes the final decision to approve or reject applications for these extended visits.

Extended Options: Washington

The “Extended Stay Family Policy” of Washington used the terminology “Extended Family Visits” rather than the now stigmatized term of conjugal visit (DOC 590.100) . Individuals able to apply for these types of visits include immediate family, parents, step-parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts or uncles, and legally married or state-certified domestic partners (DOC 590.100) . Similar to Connecticut, these visits are private and occur in mobile home units that must have at least one bedroom, a kitchen, a bathroom and a living room. Under the Washington state policy, the incarcerated person must be serving at least five years, have been incarcerated for at least one year, cannot be in a maximum security facility, and cannot be a sex offender. The visitor cannot be their victim in the case of domestic violence, and the inmate must have a clean infraction record (DOC 590.100) . For visitors, the individual cannot be on parole, probation, or awaiting trial, cannot have testified against the individual, must be on their visitor list, and must have visited in person or through video visitations at least 6 times in the last year (DOC 590.100) . This last qualification is especially unique to this policy. The visits themselves can last from 20-48 hours and cost $15 per night, a charge payable by either the visitor or the incarcerated person. An incarcerated person is eligible for one extended visit per month.

Extended Options: New York

The New York Family Reunification Program operates similarly to the aforementioned Washington State policy. There are strict eligibility requirements, which include but are not limited to: the incarcerated person must be a minimum of 6 months into their sentence, must be clear of “excessive” disciplinary infractions and have no “major or severe” infractions, must be eligible for regular visits, cannot be a sex offender, and must be involved in at least one program related to their risk-needs assessment (DOC Dir 4500) . Visitor eligibility also requires that the individual be a frequent visitor; however, unlike the six visits required in Washington, three visits within the last year are required in New York.

For a visitor to be eligible, they must be able to show they are a legally married or common-law spouse, a child over the age of 18, a child under the age of 18 accompanied by a parent or the spouse of the incarcerated person, a minor child without an adult but with written permission approved under special review, a parent or step-parent of the incarcerated person, or a grandparent (DOC Dir 4500). The review process in the state of New York takes roughly five weeks by a full cycle review of the state DOC; after initial approval, subsequent applications can be handled by the specific facility. Twenty-two out of the fifty-two correctional facilities in the state offer this program (DOC Dir 4500). Similar to Washington State, extended visits can be canceled at any time, and individuals can lose their eligibility within the program, subject to the discretion of the facility.

Policy Options

Based on prior literature, the following policy options exist for states interested in implementing a form of an extended family (conjugal) visitation program. These policy options will focus on the general type of visit. Guidelines on eligibility are largely similar across the existing policy options, and as such, a given state should determine eligibility in line with their current visitation procedures. Noting that there is state by state variation in visitation procedures (Boudin et al., 2013), it is not feasible in this brief to cover all aspects of an extended family visitation policy. Instead, the options provided are based on the shared characteristics of existing policies. In other words, in the options that follow (particularly options one and two), the state will be left to determine what specific qualifying and disqualifying protocols should be in place for incarcerated persons to be eligible for the program.

The three policy options provided focus solely on the eligibility who can visit. These options are as follows:

Option 1 – Child-Caregiver-Incarcerated Parent Extended Visit

This option suggests adopting and implementing a family visitation program inspired by the state of Connecticut, requiring a child to be present during such visitations. The naming of this option as Child-Caregiver-Incarcerated Parent Extended Visit highlights the strict requirement of this approach. Only incarcerated parents of minor children may participate in this program, and only if the caregiver of that child is also willing to participate in that visit. It is recommended in this option to follow the overarching policy guidelines of the state of Connecticut related to the contents of visitation trailers and the length of these visits. As stated previously, the state may determine additional qualifying or disqualifying metrics.  

Advantages:

• Allows for the facilitation of social ties between children and their incarcerated parent, which has been shown to reduce the criminogenic impact of growing up with an incarcerated parent.
• Allows for the strengthening and maintaining of social bonds and ties between the child, incarcerated parent, and caregiver.
• By focusing the policy and public narrative around the child being present, it may be possible to prevent negative public backlash related to the label of “conjugal” visits.

Disadvantages:

• The scope of this program is limited to incarcerated individuals who have a child and a relationship with that child’s caregiver that would facilitate a three-way visitation.
• Initial administrative, operations, and constructions costs related to setting up the infrastructure to facilitate these visits.
• Times for such visits would be limited due to school schedules and would likely cause a backlog of visitations.
• It may be hard for the child and parent to require the pre-requisite number of prior regular visits in order to be eligible for extended visits.

Option 2 – General Extended Family Visit

Adopt and implement a family visitation program inspired by states that do not have the child plus caregiver requirement. Or in other words, those states whose policies use a broader definition of who can visit. For the purposes of clarity and simplicity, this can be called the General Extended Family Visit. Within such a policy, parents, siblings, children, legal or common-law spouses, grandparents, and additional family members would be able to apply for the general extended family visit, if they had made a minimum of three regular visits (in person or video) in the prior year. It is recommended that states base their specific policy to be in line with their already existing visitation policies, while incorporating the key structures of The New York Family Reunification Program. As stated previously, the state may determine additional qualifying or disqualifying metrics.  

• A wider variety of individuals who are key social support structures in the lives of incarcerated persons would have access to the visitation program.
• Extended family visitation has been shown to decrease recidivism after re-entry, decrease instances of violence in prison between incarcerated persons, and produce stronger reports of familial ties on release.
• Longer, higher-quality interpersonal visits may facilitate a higher frequency of visits by helping to combat certain barriers to visitation.
• Allows for policy evaluation research to examine the effects of different types of visitors on things such as stress and strain experienced by incarcerated persons, recidivism, inter-inmate violence, and visitation satisfaction. This is critical to understanding what types of visits are beneficial and which ones do more harm than good.
• Different types of visitors are shown to produce different levels of social and emotional support based on factors like the gender of the incarcerated person (Adams, 2018; Mowen & Visher, 2016; Turanovic & Tasca, 2019).

Disadvantages

• Achieving pre-requite prior visitations may be difficult for individuals seeking to participate in the program.
• It may appear as a “soft on criminals” approach that led to the cancelation of extended family (conjugal) visitation programs in states such as Mississippi and New Mexico.

Option 3 – Maintain course

A third option is to maintain current visitation policies and not provide extended family visitations. This “as is” approach centers around the idea that the given Department of Corrections is doing enough to facilitate familial ties by providing its regular, standard visitation practices. This applies to states with no set-up for extended visits and those having only informal extended visit procedures (Boudin et al., 2013).

• No additional cost incurred (only applies to states that do not still have facilities from previous programs).
• No changes in policy, staffing, or procedures needed.
• No risk of public backlash of being “soft on criminals.”
• Does not address the needs of incarcerated persons or their families relative to visitation.
• Does not allow for continued research on how various types of visitation may have greater impacts on recidivism.
• Ignores that there is research that shows that extended family visits reduce recidivism more than standard visits.
• Does not address the burdens experienced by families of incarcerated persons.

Recommendations

With careful consideration of existing familial visitation policies and standard visitation policies, as well as the recognition that existing policies in either domain are not standardized but rather tailored to the individual state by their department of corrections (Boudin et al., 2013), it is the recommendation of this paper that, in light of research showing the positive effects of extended family visits on recidivism and family ties, states currently without such policies should adopt a General Extended Family Visit policy (option two in the previous section). As mentioned above, the primary advantages of this approach include its broader scope of allowable visitors (recognizing heterogeneity in visitation effects), its capacity for reducing barriers to visitation, and the expected impacts on recidivism and quality of life.

Reducing barriers to incarceration is critical to sustaining the positive effects of visitation experienced by incarcerated persons, as research has shown that disruptions such as canceled visitation or infrequent visitation diminish the statistical significance of visitation in reducing misconduct while incarcerated (Siennick et al., 2013). While a full review of the significant barriers faced in attempting to visit an incarcerated family member is beyond the scope of this report, these difficulties largely center around time and distance spent traveling, cost of traveling, already fraying relationships, and negative outlooks on the visitation environment itself (Christian, 2005; Mitchell et al., 2016; Mowen & Visher, 2016). By providing private trailers with amenities far beyond that of a regular visitation space , an overnight visit, and privacy to promote a sense of near normalcy alongside intimacy, General Extended Family Visits directly address several of these barriers.

A key component leading to the recommendation for states without extended familial visits to adopt a program in its likeness is that it does not require the presence of a child for such visits to occur and allows for the broadest range of potential visitors, with extended family being able to apply for special consideration . This is important, because both qualitative and quantitative research reveals the effects of visitations are about more than just the simple act of visiting. There is no standard “best visitor,” and factors such as the gender of the incarcerated person, the quality of the previous relationship, and parenthood status all present unique dimensions to determining who makes an individual level best visitor (Mitchell et al., 2016; Mowen & Visher, 2016; Tasca et al., 2016; Turanovic & Tasca, 2019). Thus, by having a more open approach to individuals who can apply for extended visitation, states avoid a “one-size fits all” approach to policymaking.    

While prior quantitative research is limited, this research has found support for the ability of extended family visitation to have a greater effect on reducing recidivism and inter-inmate violence than standard visitations (Boudin et al., 2013; D’Alessio et al., 2013; De Claire & Dixon, 2017; Mitchell et al., 2016). In addition to reducing recidivism (a major goal of the correctional system and criminal justice system as a whole), extended visitations help to lessen the burden of the collateral consequences of incarceration, especially the strains and stressors related to the deterioration of familial networks, experienced by both those that are incarcerated and their families on the outside (Mowen & Visher, 2016; Tasca et al., 2016; Turanovic et al., 2012). In continuing with trends supporting restorative justice and social justice approaches to the criminal justice system, alleviating strains experienced by families of the incarcerated presents another strong reason for adopting this form of General Extended Family Policy. The importance of extended family visits for the mental and social wellbeing of incarcerated persons and their own views on their familial ties has been shown in research examining both incarcerated men and women (Einat & Rabinovitz, 2013; Pierce, 2015).

It is important to note, as we strive for evidence-based practices and policies, that more research is needed on the specific effects of extended family visits. The extant research has become outdated, existing in a time and space of a vastly different socio-political and prison policy climate (i.e., the get-tough era). The meta-analyses presented above focus primarily on visitation as a whole. While extended visitation was included in their analyses, replication and further study are needed to determine the degree to which extended visits may provide more of a benefit than regular visitation programs. Thus, states implementing the above recommendation should do so with the explicit purpose of constructing a monitoring and evaluation framework in order to conduct further research on the effects of extended family visitation on recidivism, prison misconduct, and familial ties.

Annotated Bibliography

Adams, B. L. (2018). Paternal incarceration and the family: Fifteen years in review. Sociology Compass , 12 (3), e12567. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.12567

This review of previous literature is important for understanding the effects of incarceration on families. The researchers provide a comprehensive review of the current state of literature related to paternal incarceration and provide insights into the importance of visitation for familial ties. Those without a background on the impacts of incarceration on families can gain a snapshot of modern research on the topic from this paper.

Boudin, C., Stutz, T., & Littman, A. (2013). Prison visitation policies: A fifty-state survey. Yale Law and Policy Review , 32(1) , 149-189.

This is the only known comprehensive review of visitation policies in every state. This paper highlights the variation in policies by state and notes the differences between formal stated policies and informal practices. The article features a review of various extended stay programs. However, it should be noted that several states listed as providing extended stay programs, no longer provide such services (New Mexico and Mississippi).

Carlson, B. E., & Cevera, N. (1991). Inmates and their Families: Conjugal Visits, Family Contact, and Family Functioning. Criminal Justice and Behavior , 18 (3), 318–331. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854891018003005

This study examined differences in the perceptions of family functioning and familial bonds between incarcerated men and their wives participating in the "Family Reunification Program", an extended visit policy in New York State. The results of this study, based on surveys by 63 incarcerated persons and 39 wives, found positive effects for the extended visitation program. Both incarcerated men and their partners reported higher levels of closeness than those not participating in the Family Reunification program.

Christian, J. (2005). Riding the Bus: Barriers to Prison Visitation and Family Management Strategies. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice , 21 (1), 31–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/1043986204271618

This qualitative research study examines the lived experience of individuals riding a 24 hour bus to visit their incarcerated loved ones. The study finds significant barriers to incarceration related not only to time and distance but also treatment by correctional staff and the visitation environment. This study provides qualitative depth to help understand the relatively low rate of individuals receiving visits while incarcerated in the United States.

Cochran, J. C., & Mears, D. P. (2013). Social isolation and inmate behavior: A conceptual framework for theorizing prison visitation and guiding and assessing research. Journal of Criminal Justice , 41 (4), 252–261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2013.05.001

This article provides a comprehensive review on scholarship related to both positive and negative effects of prison visitation. The article provides an expert analysis on the current state of the literature as well as the heterogeneous impacts of various types of prison visitation.

Connecticut Department of Corrections. (2020). Inmate Visits (10.6; p. 14). Connecticut Department of Corrections.

This document provides the Connecticut Department of Corrections policies related to visitations at carceral facilities in the state. It presents the overall policies of the state, including but not limited to the states’ extended visit policy. It is of critical importance to understanding existing policies in place

D’Alessio, S. J., Flexon, J., & Stolzenberg, L. (2013). The Effect of Conjugal Visitation on Sexual Violence in Prison. American Journal of Criminal Justice , 38 (1), 13–26. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-012-9155-5

This article examines the impact of conjugal visits on sexual violence in prisons by examining longitudinal data from all fifty states. In this study the dependent variable is the yearly number of reported sexual offenses between incarcerated persons and the independent variable of interest is a dummy variable based on if a state has a conjugal visitation program. This study found that states with conjugal visitation programs have significantly lower levels of sexual offenses when controlling for other factors. This article makes up a key portion of the limited extant literature on conjugal visitation.

De Claire, K., & Dixon, L. (2017). The Effects of Prison Visits from Family Members on Prisoners’ Well-Being, Prison Rule Breaking, and Recidivism: A Review of Research since 1991. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse , 18 (2), 185–199. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838015603209

This article provides a meta-analysis of prison visitation research, focused specifically on the effects of that research for incarcerated persons. The study finds that visitation generally has a positive impact on inmate wellbeing, reduces recidivism, and reduces inter-inmate violence. Additionally, this research finds heterogeneity in the effects of visitation based on the type of visit and the gender of the inmate being visited. This study is important for those seeking a background on the effects of prison visitation for incarcerated persons.

Duwe, G., & Clark, V. (2013). Blessed Be the Social Tie That Binds: The Effects of Prison Visitation on Offender Recidivism. Criminal Justice Policy Review , 24 (3), 271–296. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403411429724

This article examines the impact of visitation, visitation frequency, and type of visitor on recidivism risk. The study found that examining visitation frequency shows there are nuanced effects beyond visitation yes/no of visitation on recidivism. Additionally, certain visitors were found to decrease recidivism risk while others, such as former spouses, increased risk of recidivism post-release. It is a well-researched and methodologically sound article providing a nuanced take on the effects of visitation.

Einat, T., & Rabinovitz, S. (2013). A Warm Touch in a Cold Cell: Inmates’ Views on Conjugal Visits in a Maximum-Security Women’s Prison in Israel. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology , 57 (12), 1522–1545. https://doi.org/10.1177/0306624X12461475

This article examines the perceptions of conjugal visitations within a women's prison in Isreal. This qualitative study reveals key themes related to the visitation experience that highlights its importance for maintaining familial ties and social bonds for participating women. It is an important study for those examining the significance of providing extended visits beyond measurable metrics such as recidivism.

Enns, P. K., Yi, Y., Comfort, M., Goldman, A. W., Lee, H., Muller, C., Wakefield, S., Wang, E. A., & Wildeman, C. (2019). What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated? Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). Socius , 5 , 2378023119829332. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023119829332

This article uses a new tool the Family History of Incarcerated Survey, to answer their research question of how many individuals living in America have ever had an incarcerated family member. The authors found that nearly half of all Americans have experienced the incarceration of an immediate member of their family. This research is important for beginning to understand the significance of having a variety of visitation programs within a given department of corrections.

Hensley, C., Koscheski, M., & Tewksbury, R. (2002). Does Participation in Conjugal Visitations Reduce Prison Violence in Mississippi? An Exploratory Study. Criminal Justice Review , 27 (1), 52–65. https://doi.org/10.1177/073401680202700104

This study examines the impact of conjugal visitation on inter-inmate violence in prisons within the state of Mississippi. The researchers surveyed 256 men and women within two prisons in the state. The researchers found no statistically significant difference in threats or acts of violence between those participating in the program and those that were not. This study is important to recognize because it does not find positive effects of conjugal visitation.

Hensley, C., Rutland, S., & Gray-Ray, P. (2000). Inmate attitudes toward the conjugal visitation program in Mississippi prisons: An exploratory study. American Journal of Criminal Justice , 25 (1), 137–145.

This study examines perceptions of conjugal visitation within two Mississippi prisons. In this study incarcerated persons, both participants and non-participants were surveyed. The key finding of this study is that both groups rated the program as being a both important and necessary form of visitation regardless of their own eligibility for the program.

McElreath, D. H., Doss, D. A., Jensen, C. J., Wigginton, M. P., Mallory, S., Lyons, T., Williamson, L., & Jones, D. W. (2016). The End of the Mississippi Experiment with Conjugal Visitation. The Prison Journal , 96 (5), 752–764. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885516662644

This article discusses the factors that led to the cancelation of the Mississippi conjugal visitation program. The authors cover previous literature on conjugal visitation as well as research specific to the state of Mississippi. It is an important piece to read to understand common objections to extended familial visitation programs.

Mears, D. P., Cochran, J. C., Siennick, S. E., & Bales, W. D. (201). Prison Visitation and Recidivism. Justice Quarterly , 29 (6), 888–918.

This article uses propensity score matching in a rigorous analysis of the effects of prison visitation on recidivism. The authors find that different types of visits as well as the frequency of visits are important moderating variables on the effect of visitation measured as yes/no on recidivism. Overall the researchers find that visitation has a positive effect on recidivism. This study is an important piece of the quantitative literature on the effects of visitation on recidivism due to its rigorous design.

Mitchell, M. M., Spooner, K., Jia, D., & Zhang, Y. (2016). The effect of prison visitation on reentry success: A meta-analysis. Journal of Criminal Justice , 47 , 74–83. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2016.07.006

This meta-analysis examines the effects of prison visitation on recidivism. The authors of this meta-analysis examined studies that looked at nuanced factors that may effects the any relationship between visitation and recidivism including; who is visiting, what type of visit is being conducted, and the gender and race of the individual being visited. The results of this study point to extended visits having a greater impact on recidivism than standard visits. This article is important for those looking to gain immediate insights into trends in the research on visitation.

Mowen, T. J., & Visher, C. A. (2016). Changing the Ties that Bind. Criminology & Public Policy , 15 (2), 503–528. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9133.12207

This study specifically examines factors that lead to changes in familial ties when a member of that family is incarcerated. Central among their findings to this policy brief is the reported importance of visitation in sustaining familial ties. This study is important for understanding the dynamics within families with an incarcerated immediate member.

New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision. (2016). Family Reunion Program (DIR #4500; p. 14). New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

This document provides the New York State Department of Corrections and Community Supervision policies related to the extended stay visitation program at carceral facilities in the state. It presents the overall policies of the state regarding this program known specifically as the Family Reunification Program. It is of critical importance to understanding existing policies in place

Pierce, M. B. (2015). Male Inmate Perceptions of the Visitation Experience: Suggestions on How Prisons Can Promote Inmate–Family Relationships. The Prison Journal , 95 (3), 370–396. https://doi.org/10.1177/0032885515587471

This study, through a qualitative design, examines heterogeneity in visitation by asking incarcerated men about their visitation experiences. The authors specifically included those that had experienced extended stay familial visits and the importance of these visits are accounted for in detail. This article presents important findings via recommendations these men have for improving visitation experiences.

Siennick, S. E., Mears, D.P & Bales, W.D., (2013) Here and Gone: Anticipation and Separation Effects of Prison Visits on Inmate Infractions. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 50 (3), 417–444. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022427812449470

This study examines the impact of irregular visitation schedules and canceled visitations on the behavior of incarcerated persons. The results of this study show that gaps in visitation may increase inmate infractions and violence. The authors find that maintaining and facilitating regular visits reduces infractions and violence. This study is important for examining the impacts of visitation backups and canceled visitations.

Tasca, M., Mulvey, P., & Rodriguez, N. (2016). Families coming together in prison: An examination of visitation encounters. Punishment & Society , 18 (4), 459–478. https://doi.org/10.1177/1462474516642856

This qualitative study takes a unique approach to studying prison visitation by examining what is said during these visits in order to assess factors related to perceptions of a "successful" visit. The authors present several key themes related to the types of conversations most frequently had based on the relationship between the visitor and visiting party. It is important for understanding the social dynamics of visitations.

Turanovic, J. J., Rodriguez, N., & Pratt, T. C. (2012). The collateral consequences of incarceration revisited: A qualitative analysis of the effects of caregivers of children of incarcerated parents. Criminology , 50 (4), 913–959. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1745-9125.2012.00283.x

This study presents a large (100 caregiver) qualitative analysis on the experiences of family members of the incarcerated. The results of this study highlight the collateral consequences of incarceration experienced by families, including barriers to incarceration. The study highlights first-hand accounts on how visitation can be a strong asset in lessening the collateral consequences of incarceration. This study is important for those seeking more information on the social benefits of visitation beyond that of recidivism prevention.

Turanovic, J. J., & Tasca, M. (2019). Inmates’ Experiences with Prison Visitation. Justice Quarterly , 36 (2), 287–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/07418825.2017.1385826

This extensive study of experiences of prison visitation examined emotional responses to visits by the incarcerated. The results of this study, derived from 228 incarcerated persons, show that a whole range of both positive and negative emotions associated with visitation are commonly experienced. The authors recommend family-focused interventions, such as extended familial visits may help maximize the positive effects of visitations while combatting negative effects.

Washington Department of Corrections. (2020). Extended Family Visiting (DOC 590.100; p. 17). Washington Department of Corrections.

This document provides the Washington State Department of Corrections policies related to extended family visitations at carceral facilities in the state. It presents the overall policies of the program and is of critical importance to understanding existing policies in place.

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Jail and Prison Inmate Visitation – General Rules and Guidelines for Visiting an Inmate in a County Jail

Posted 2/6/2011 by Mark Miclette Inmate Visitation , Visitation

WARNING - Take these Visitation Guidelines Seriously!

Failure to adhere to these guidelines will either make your trip a wasted one or worse, prohibit you from ever going back. Even more troubling, some violations of the jail’s rules could land you in jail as well. Never have in your possession drugs or alcohol of any kind, nor be under the influence while visiting a jail or prison. In some jails and prisons possession of tobacco on their property could land you in serious legal trouble.

Do not take any chances. Lockup facilities take their guidelines VERY seriously.

For a list of Guidelines and Schedules for your jail or prison, use the JAILexchange Search feature to search Visitation Rules for every one of America’s 9,000 US Jails and Prisons .

General Guidelines

When visiting, each visitor age 16 or older must have one of the following unexpired types of identification:

• Driver's license
• Federal, state, local government identification card (any state)
• Military identification
• U.S. Immigration identification (including visas)
• Border crossing card issued by the United States Department of Justice
• Current high school identification
• Matricula Consular ID card issued after April 22, 2002 by the Consul General of Mexico

Walk-in visits will be accepted, on a space available basis—and first come, first served—as long as the visitors check in one hour before the visit time. Once a visit is scheduled, no “add-ons” will be made over the phone. Additional visitors may be allowed, up to the maximum of three, by arriving one hour prior to the visit and checking in with the other visitors. Cancellations are not accepted over the phone. However, due to security reasons, many jails do not accept "walk-in" visits.

While jails attempt to honor all visit reservations, visits may be changed or cancelled without notice. Also, changes in the inmate’s housing assignments may automatically cancel a scheduled visit. Visits will not be scheduled if the inmate has been previously scheduled for court on the same date.

Many jails require that the visitor be approved in advance by the inmate they wish to visit.

Many jails require a visit to be scheduled using a form filled out in advance and submitted for approval to the jail.

Visitors must usually check in together one hour before the scheduled visit. If a visitor is late, the visit may be cancelled.

A maximum of 3 visitors (including children) may visit an inmate at any one time, and only one visit is allowed per day. Some jails only allow one or two visitors at one time.

Most jail visits are limited to 15-30 minutes in length. Frequency of visits depends on the jail. Some allow only one, others as many as five, although that is rare.

Minors must be accompanied by their parent or legal guardian.

Visit times are subject to change or cancellation due to facility security or disciplinary reasons.

Disabled access visiting areas are available in some jails. If you have special needs, please inform the staff when you reserve the visit.

Young children are allowed, however if they are excessively noisy or unruly, the visit will be terminated.

If you are on probation, Watch Commander approval is necessary to visit.

There is no expectation of privacy in a jail facility. Social visits may be monitored or recorded.

Standard Dress Code: No strapless garments, no halter-tops, no bare midriffs, no see-through, wrap around skirts, tops or dresses. No mini-skirts or short dresses. Shorts must not be shorter than mid-thigh in length. No slits on skirts or dresses. No latex or skintight pants, skirts or shorts.

If you have previously been convicted of a felony and served time in a jail or state prison, you may not enter the grounds of a County Jail without the permission of the Facility Commander. That permission should be obtained in writing before attempting to schedule a visit. Entry to the facility grounds without such permission is a felony in some states.

An excessive pattern of late arrivals or “no-shows” for visits will result in the loss of phone reservation privileges or the suspension of visits.

‘Contact Visits’

Some jails allow ‘contact’ visits, though this is rare. The following additional visit regulations must be observed when having contact visits:

• Nothing is to be brought into the facility except I.D. and car keys. One blanket, one diaper, and one bottle can be brought in for a baby. The following items are specifically prohibited: purses or bags, food or beverages, pets, firearms, knives, or other weapons, drugs or alcohol, and cigarettes. Keys are to be hung on board provided. All visitors must have a reservation to visit.
• No reclining together on the floor or tabletops. Visitors and inmates must sit across from each other, no laying or sitting on laps, no draping of legs, no body rubs/massages, no hugging, no straddling benches. Usually a single kiss is allowed at the start of a visit and again at the conclusion.

Jails and prisons have strict guidelines for a reason, the safety and security of the staff and other inmates. Please check with the facility regarding their rules and schedules before considering an inmate visit.

______________________________________________________________________

To conduct a free Inmate Search for any one of America’s 9,000 Jails and Prisons, click here .

To lookup Visitation Rules and Schedules for any one of America’s 9,000 Jails and Prisons, click here .

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.

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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.

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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?

“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.”

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.

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.

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.

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“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 .”

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As Conjugal Visits Fade, a Lifeline to Inmates’ Spouses Is Lost

By Kim Severson

• Jan. 12, 2014

PARCHMAN, Miss. — To spend time alone with the man she married four months ago, Ebony Fisher, 25, drives nearly three hours through the flat cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta until she pulls into a gravel lot next to the state’s rural penitentiary.

She joins her husband, who in 2008 began serving a 60-year sentence for rape, aggravated assault and arson, in a small room with a metal bunk and a bathroom. For an hour, they get to act like a married couple.

“That 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 Ms. Fisher, who is studying to be a surgical assistant.

But conjugal visits, a concept that started here at the Mississippi State Penitentiary as a prisoner-control practice in the days of Jim Crow, will soon be over. Christopher B. Epps, the prison commissioner, plans to end the program Feb. 1, citing budgetary reasons and “the number of babies being born possibly as a result.” In Mississippi, where more than 22,000 prisoners are incarcerated — the second-highest rate in the nation — 155 inmates participated last year.

Since they began here in the early 1900s, when the penitentiary was just called Parchman Farm, conjugal visits have been an unlikely barometer of racial mores and changing times both in Mississippi and in states like California and New York, where married same-sex couples can participate.

In the 1970s, new prisons often included special housing for what had come to be called extended family visits. But by 1993, only 17 states allowed conjugal visits. Mississippi is one of just five that have active programs.

In California and New York, they are called family visits and are designed to help keep families together in an environment that approximates home. Some research shows that they can help prisoners better integrate back into the mainstream after their release.

Visits in those states, and in Washington and New Mexico, can last 24 hours to three days. They are spent in small apartments or trailers, often with children and grandparents, largely left alone by prison guards. Visitors bring their own food and sometimes have a barbecue.

In New York, about 8,000 family visits were arranged last year, a figure that corrections officials say has declined. Of those, 48 percent were with spouses. The rest were with family members such as children or parents.

Studies cited by Yale law students in a 2012 review of family visitation programs showed that the programs could work as powerful incentives for good behavior, help reduce sexual activity among prisoners and help strengthen families.

Though what qualifies prisoners for the visits varies from state to state, all must have records of good behavior and be legally married. In most, prisoners in maximum security or on death row are denied the visits. Federal prisons do not allow them.

Mississippi ended its more extensive family visitations last year but left in place the hourlong visits, which since their inception a century ago have been designed more as a way to control inmates than nurture relationships.

“Conjugal visits have been a privilege,” said Tara Booth, a spokeswoman for the Mississippi Corrections Department. “So in that sense, it has, as other internal opportunities, helped to maintain order.”

The notion of allowing prisoners to have sex was born here shortly after Parchman Farm opened in 1903 as a series of work camps on 1,600 acres of rich Delta farmland. Inmates, most of whom were black, were used as free farm labor in an arrangement not that far removed from slavery.

Set in the middle of the birthplace of the blues, Parchman Farm has been the subject of many songs written by classic bluesmen like Bukka White and others who did time here.

The warden at the time believed sex could be used to compel black men to work harder in the fields, according to a history on the practice produced in the 1970s by Tyler Fletcher, who founded the department of criminal justice at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1973. So black prisoners were allowed time on Sunday with spouses or, more often, prostitutes.

By the 1940s, makeshift lean-tos and shacks built by inmates for the visits gave way to formal facilities, and white inmates were more likely participants than black ones.

Announced in December, the decision to stop the hourlong conjugal visits came as a surprise to the handful of prison spouses who rely on them. Several have taken to Facebook and other online forums and written to lawmakers to try to save what they say is an essential part of their relationships. A Mississippi prisoners’ advocacy group and a Memphis-based civil rights organization have planned a rally for Friday in Jackson, the state capital, to protest the policy change.

But State Representative Richard Bennett, Republican of Long Beach, wants the practice stopped, and he said no amount of protest would change his mind.

He said he learned about conjugal visits a few years ago when an elementary school principal told him a student of hers had shown up with a photograph of a new sibling. The student’s mother was incarcerated. The baby had been conceived during a conjugal visit.

In 2012, Mr. Bennett introduced a bill to end the visits. It did not get much attention, so he will try again when the Legislature meets this month. He said he was aware of Mr. Epps’s plans, but wanted a permanent ban. Officials have not offered any figures on the number of babies born or the program’s cost.

“I don’t think it’s fair to the children conceived and to the taxpayers,” he said. “You are in prison for a reason. You are in there to pay your debt, and conjugal visits should not be part of the deal.”

But Tina Perry, 49, a production manager at a small newspaper in eastern Mississippi, said the spouses of prisoners should not be forced to suffer any more than they already do. And the state, she said, should not take away something that is inexpensive and infrequent but essential.

She has been visiting her husband in prison every couple of months for eight years. He is serving time for molesting his former wife’s daughter, and has 19 more years to go. Ms. Perry said he was innocent. She called the surroundings, a small room with a thin mattress, “nasty” but said it was an hour she treasured nonetheless.

“It’s your husband,” she said. “You take what you can get.”

Ms. Fisher, whose husband is facing 60 years, said she was heartbroken because no more conjugal visits meant no children.

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

But officials who want the practice to be stopped say the state should not be helping to produce children who will be raised by single parents and possibly need state support.

There are concerns, too, about cost and H.I.V. transmission.

Women interviewed about the visits said they would be willing to pay to defray costs. And they made it clear that the visits were not about the sex. They are about privacy in a world where every letter is opened, every call monitored. Regular visits are crowded with other prisoners and their families.

“You never just get husband and wife time,” said Amy Parsons, an office worker in Arkansas who drives eight hours to see her husband, who was convicted of aggravated assault. His release date is 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.”

• 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

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What States Allow Conjugal Visits?

A 2012 research conducted by the Southern Criminal Justice Association indicated that state prison systems prohibiting conjugal visits experienced sexual violence at an average rate of 226 cases per 100,000 prisoners. 

Meanwhile, states permitting similar visits had a less frequent occurrence of such violence: 57 per 100,000 inmates.

These findings may suggest support for conjugal visits. However, decision-makers may need to look at more than the numbers to determine whether such visits are practical and beneficial in the long term.

How do conjugal visits work, and what states permit these visits? Are conjugal visits a right or privilege? How about same-sex couples? Should individuals still call it a “conjugal visit” today?

lookupinmate.org addresses these questions and many more. This article also covers the requirements for inmates to be allowed conjugal visits and the arguments regarding such visits.

Which U.S. Prisons Allow Conjugal Visits? Which States Have Them?

During the 2000s, only California, New Mexico, Mississippi, Connecticut, Washington, and New York allowed such visits. By 2015, Mississippi and New Mexico discontinued their programs.

In 1993, conjugal visitation programs existed in 17 U.S. states. However, no existing records mention what these states were. One survey mentioned that in 2013, there were at least nine states with such programs, namely:

• Connecticut
• Mississippi
• South Dakota

What Is a Conjugal Visit?

A conjugal visit is when a prisoner is allowed to receive a visit, usually from a husband or wife, to spend private time together.

The idea behind such visits is to let inmates have the time for intimate contact with their partners.

Depending on the state’s conjugal visit program, sometimes called the extended family visitation program, a visit may last for several hours or overnight.

What Everyone Gets Wrong

Conjugal visits are not entirely only about physical intimacy or sex. Officially, such visits are called family visits, and kids are permitted to stay overnight.

In Connecticut, the inmate’s spouse or partner cannot visit alone: the inmate’s child must be present.

Meanwhile, Washington allows two related inmates in the same facility, like siblings or a parent and child, to be visited jointly by immediate family members from outside. About one-third of extended visits occur between spouses alone in the state.

Conjugal Visits to Help Preserve Families

Conjugal visits can help preserve family units. In New York, conjugal visits are referred to as family reunion programs (FRP).

Since conjugal visits are also called extended family visits, the concept of such visits should not be limited to physical intimacy only.

How Conjugal Visits Work

In states offering extended prison visits, inmates must have a record of good behavior to be permitted conjugal visits. However, prisoners with life sentences , criminals convicted of domestic violence, or sex offenders charged with crimes like sexual assault are usually excluded.

If you want to fully understand how conjugal visits work, here are a few questions to consider:

Is There a Long Waiting List?

Prisons allowing conjugal visits keep a schedule and inform inmates of the next visit date. A facility with a large number of inmates may have a long waiting list depending on how many visits the facility can accommodate.

Who Is Eligible?

Although conjugal visit rules vary between states, prisoners, in general, must apply for that privilege. Before being granted visitation, the prisoner must undergo and pass a health screening.

In California, an inmate must be married to a legal spouse to qualify for conjugal visits.

Prisoners who committed several infractions, like fighting and swearing during the past six months, are not eligible.

How Often Can Prisoners Have Visitors ?

Extended family visits usually have three schedules: 6, 12, and 24 hours. The facility allows these visits to eligible convicts an average of once or twice a year.

Where Do Conjugal Visits Take Place?

Correctional facilities allowing conjugal visits typically have private, apartment-style accommodations where inmates and their visiting loved ones or significant others can stay. These rooms come with sheets, towels, soap, and condoms.

Can Same-Sex Couples Take Part?

In 2007, California allowed conjugal visits to married same-sex couples or those in a civil union. New York permitted the same privilege in 2011.

Conjugal Visitation Is a Privilege, Not a Right

The United States Supreme Court and several federal courts believe prisoners have no constitutional right to conjugal visits. So such visits are considered a privilege, especially for inmates exhibiting good behavior while serving their time in prison.

Still, some prisoners and their spouses have filed lawsuits in federal and state courts, claiming that denying conjugal visits violates these rights :

• The marital privacy rights of the prisoner and spouse
• The right to procreate
• The constitutional prohibition against unusual and cruel punishment
• Religious freedom rights provided by the First Amendment

Despite these arguments, courts found no constitutional right to a conjugal visit and rejected these claims.

Are Conjugal Visits Free of Charge?

Conjugal visits are free for prisoners except in Washington. As of 2013, the state’s participation fee for such visits was $10 per night.

Are Conjugal and Extended Visitation Privileges Highly Regulated?

States regulate and determine who a family member is. Inmates and visitors must submit applications to be allowed conjugal visits.

All prison visitors are subjected to a physical search for contraband or weapons, whether for a conjugal or different type of visit. Facilities do not allow drugs or alcohol and prohibit cell phones or other electronic devices.

Prison staff ensures that visitors bring only a few highly regulated items into the facility and prohibit certain foods or gifts. The staff can also turn away visitors who are not wearing appropriate clothing.

Why Have Visitation Programs Been Discontinued?

There are claims that the discontinuation of conjugal visits in many states is due to public opinion. There are individuals who believe criminals should not have access to anything, including time with family members. Others complain when they learn inmates have health care access.

Another reason is reports of contraband getting snuck into prison and babies being conceived during conjugal visits. However, there are no figures to back up these claims, leading to conclusions that these reports are unfounded.

Still, states mention that the actual reason for the discontinuation of such programs is budget cuts.

In New Mexico, the program costs taxpayers $120,000 every year. Though the state’s budget in 2016 was $6.2 billion and the median household income was $43,782, the state did not seem to see the benefits outweighing the cost.

Why Should Visitation Programs Continue?

Initial claims suggested that visitation programs help lower parole violations by 25%. However, one study involving New York’s family reunion program showed that extended family visits might lower recidivism (tendency to reoffend) among prisoners by 67%.

There are also claims that one potential benefit of conjugal visits is lowering the rate of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) among prisoners. However, studies have not conclusively established a correlation between conjugal visits and lower STD levels.

Because there is more than only intimacy involved in these visits, prisons in states allowing conjugal visits have renamed such programs “family visits.”

Correctional officers claim that prisoners with visitation access are generally happier and are encouraged to maintain good behavior to earn visitation privileges or even early release .

If you or your family members are planning to visit a loved one in prison, you need a platform to search for records about that inmate. lookupinmate.org is a nationwide online inmate records checker that can help you locate prisoners detained in any correctional facility.

10 Arresting Realities Regarding Conjugal Visits     

Despite not having many states implementing conjugal visits, individuals who may have relatives or spouses in prison need to understand the following facts about this program:

Prisoners and Their Visitors Must Meet Certain Requirements to Get Permission for a Visit

Rules on extended family visits typically vary from one state to another. However, one common rule in California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington is that conjugal visits occur only in prisons with medium security or lower . Inmates must also have a record of good behavior and clean health.

Another requirement is that spouses who visit their incarcerated husband or wife must pass a body search and background check and be registered on the prison’s visitor list.

The “ Conjugal Visit ” Phrase Is a Misnomer

Conjugal visits today are called extended family visits or family reunion visits. The reasons for these visits include:

• Maintaining the connection between inmates and their families
• Reducing recidivism (or an inmate’s tendency to reoffend)
• Motivating good behavior

Renaming the program to “extended family visit” helps emphasize the inclusion of all family members instead of only the inmate’s spouse or partner.

Like Hotels, Prisons Facilitating Extended Family Visits Have Toiletries for Guests

U.S. prisons have special facilities like trailers, cabins, or apartment-style housing for extended family visits. Some prisons provide inmates with sheets, toiletries, towels, condoms, and lube.

Other prisons have two-bedroom apartments featuring a living and dining room and amenities like TVs, DVD players, and games like dominoes and Jenga.

Visitors may be permitted to bring prepared food or groceries during the visit, depending on the state prison’s rules.

Mississippi Was the First State That Allowed Conjugal Visits Nearly 100 Years Ago

Mississippi was the first state to allow conjugal visits in the early 1900s. The state even provided the prostitutes who charged 50 cents for their services. 

The first conjugal visits occurred at Parchman Farm, also called Mississippi State Penitentiary , in 1918. James Parchman, the warden, used conjugal visits as an incentive for male prisoners (who were mostly African-American) to work harder in the prison’s farming industry.

However, the state later canceled the costly program despite protests from prisoners’ families and rights groups who believed that even infrequent visitations promote family bonds and boost prisoner morale.

Only Four States Still Allow Conjugal Visits

As of 2015, the only states allowing conjugal visits are California, New York, Washington, and Connecticut.

Mississippi and New Mexico also had conjugal visit policies before. However, Mississippi halted allowing these visits on February 1, 2014, and New Mexico did the same on May 1, 2014.

Connecticut Prisoners Cannot Be Level 4 or Above to Be Eligible for Conjugal Visit

In Connecticut’s prison system, levels on a scale of 1 to 5 refer to how much guards monitor inmates daily.

Prisoners also cannot be gang members, on restrictive status, or convicted of a class A or class B disciplinary offense within the last 12 months before requesting eligibility.

In India, Married Prisoners Have the Legal Right to Conjugal Visits and Bear Children

In 2015, India’s government passed legislation declaring that married inmates have the right to conjugal visits. These inmates are also entitled to provide sperm to their spouses for artificial insemination if the inmate so wishes.

Saudi Arabian Prisons Are Surprisingly Liberal and Generous

In Saudi Arabia, male inmates are allowed one conjugal visit per month, and the rule applies to each spouse. So, men with multiple wives can have numerous visits every month.

The Saudi government provides inmates’ families monthly allowance for food, housing, and education. The government also pays for airfare and hotel expenses family members incur when visiting a relative in prison.

A prisoner who wishes to attend a family wedding or funeral is provided $2,600 to give as a gift. In 2014, the Saudi government spent $35 million on these prisoner privileges.

A German Prisoner Used Their Unsupervised Conjugal Visit to Murder Their Visitor

In April 2010, a 50-year-old prisoner killed his 46-year-old girlfriend during an unsupervised conjugal visit in a German prison. During one of those visits, the prisoner stabbed his girlfriend using a steak knife and strangled her.

Outraged Germans criticized the justice minister and prison authorities for this incident and questioned a few other instances of relaxed security at German prisons, including prisoner escapes and beatings.

Eventually, German prisons increased security and implemented stricter rules for conjugal visits.

Brazil Has a Sexist Conjugal Visit Policy

In Brazil, straight and gay male prisoners can receive visitors. However, female inmates rarely receive the same privilege.

Though such differences in conjugal visit policies appear discriminatory, female prisoners in Brazil may have to worry more about overcrowded and unsanitary prison cells. Pregnant inmates do not have sufficient access to proper medical care, and many female prisoners can be unjustly confined in isolation units.

The Checkered History: How Did the Conjugal Visit Program Start? When Did Conjugal Visits Start?

Conjugal visits started in 1918 at Parchman Farm, a labor camp in Mississippi.

At first, the camp allowed visits for Black prisoners only. The visitors were local prostitutes who arrived every Sunday and were paid to service single and married inmates.

Historian David Oshinsky said Jim Crow-era prison officials perceived African-American men as having stronger sex drives than whites and would not work hard in the cotton fields until they were sexually sated.

In the 1940s, the government expanded the conjugal visit program to include white male prisoners and their wives. Finally, in the 1970s, the program included female inmates.

• Do prisoners in South Carolina get conjugal visits ?

A journal dated 1981 mentioned that South Carolina was among the states allowing conjugal visits at that time. Today, the state no longer implements that program. Additionally, federal prisons also do not allow conjugal visits.

• Do death row inmates get conjugal visits?

Death row prisoners are not eligible for conjugal visits, even in states that permit conjugal visits for other inmates. Also, no state officially allows conjugal visits for death row inmates.

• Do other countries have conjugal visits ?

The U.S. is not the only country allowing conjugal visits despite having only four states implementing this program.

In Brazil, Venezuela, and Columbia, prisons allow unmarried inmates to have such visits. India and Saudi Arabia also have conjugal visit programs.

While Germany permits prisoners to apply for conjugal visits, the screening is strict, and security is tight, especially since an inmate murdered his girlfriend during one such visit in 2010.

Searching for an inmate in the U.S., not knowing where your loved ones are detained? lookupinmate.org lets you search for a prisoner by state or prison type . This one-stop inmate lookup site has access to more than 7,000 correctional facilities across the United States.

• The Effect of Conjugal Visitation on Sexual Violence in Prison https://www.prearesourcecenter.org/sites/default/files/library/theeffectofconjugalvisitation.pdf
• Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty-State Survey https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/area/center/liman/document/prison_visitation_policies.pdf
• Conjugal Visits https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/11/conjugal-visits
• Heaven https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/11/heaven#.ybmNK2evz
• Conjugal Visitation in American Prisons Today https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/conjugal-visitation-american-prisons-today

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How children are conceived while the mom is in prison

• By Mr. Digital Fingers
• May 10, 2024

When one thinks of prison , the idea of family expansion isn’t usually the first thought that comes to mind. However, the topic of how children are conceived while the mom is in prison remains a poignant and complex aspect of incarceration that intersects with human rights, familial bonds, and institutional policies. This article explores the mechanisms, challenges, and implications of conceiving children in such an environment, highlighting a subject that is often overlooked yet deeply human.

Understanding prison visitation rights

The primary method through which children are conceived in prison is via conjugal visits. These are scheduled periods during which an inmate is permitted to spend several hours or days in a private setting with a visitor, typically a legal spouse. Not all institutions or jurisdictions allow such privileges, and the rules around who qualifies and under what circumstances can vary widely.

Eligibility for Conjugal Visits

To be eligible for conjugal visits, inmates generally must meet specific criteria:

• They must have exhibited good behavior during their incarceration.
• The facility must have provisions and policies supporting such visits.
• Inmates are often required to be legally married to their visitor, although some places may allow life partners.

These visits are intended to preserve family bonds and improve inmate morale and behavior. However, they are not universally supported or implemented, with arguments against them including concerns about safety and propriety.

Logistics of conjugal visits

Conjugal visits take place in specially designated areas within the prison that afford some degree of privacy. These facilities are equipped to mimic a small family environment, with private rooms, kitchens, and sometimes even play areas for children who might be visiting. The visits usually last from one day to three days, providing a semblance of normalcy and privacy.

Psychological and social implications

The conception of children during imprisonment brings with it a unique set of psychological and social challenges. For the parent in prison, it offers a rare opportunity to engage in family life, providing motivation and hope. For the partner on the outside, it’s a commitment to maintaining a relationship under strained circumstances.

Children conceived and born under these circumstances face their own challenges, growing up with one parent absent for a significant duration, and sometimes throughout their entire childhood. This situation can impact their emotional and social development, often necessitating additional support from the remaining parent, extended family, or community services.

Ethical and legal considerations

The right to family life, even for those incarcerated, is protected under various international human rights laws, yet the implementation is fraught with ethical dilemmas. The debate centers around the rights of the inmate versus the potential societal and familial impacts. Furthermore, the children conceived have rights too, including the right to know and be cared for by their parents.

Challenges and controversies

Despite the benefits highlighted by proponents, conjugal visits and the resulting conception of children are subject to criticism. Critics argue that they may pose security risks and complicate the administration of justice. Moreover, there is the issue of resource allocation — maintaining such facilities and programs can be costly.

Children, family, and the complexities of conception in prison

The conception of children in prison through conjugal visits presents a multifaceted issue that mirrors broader discussions about punishment, rehabilitation, and societal norms. This process allows incarcerated individuals to maintain some aspects of family life, providing significant psychological benefits that can aid in their rehabilitation and improve their overall well-being. However, it simultaneously introduces substantial ethical and logistical challenges that cannot be overlooked.

Addressing these issues demands a nuanced approach that considers the rights and needs of all parties involved: the incarcerated individuals, their partners, their children, and society as a whole. It requires policies that not only respect the rights of those in prison but also take into account the impact on families and communities outside the prison walls.

It prompts us to reevaluate how we, as a society, support and value family connections under the most difficult conditions. By doing so, we can better understand the human elements at play within our justice system and explore more compassionate and effective approaches to correction and rehabilitation .

This story was created using AI technology.

3 Responses

I was in prison the lack of these visits wrecks marriages. And should qualify as cruel and unusual punishments.

You should have thought about ur marriage before u committed the crime. Don’t blame society for ur mistakes

Amen Jeff!!!Amen!!

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