In summary, claims about benefits of conjugal visits. In short, support from both prison administration and inmates was based on opinion.
There are some significant flaws to conjugal visit programs. Mississippi, the state with the longest history for such a program, allows it only to a minority of inmates. Such visits can only serve only the minority of inmates who are married, who are housed in a minimum or medium security facility, and who are not discipline problems within the prison. Moreover, Mississippi has felt it necessary for special facilities to support their conjugal program, a significant expense. The argument that family visits will create jealousy among non-eligible prisoners seems less strong, especially as it is done in Mississippi, discreetly and away from the general prison population. Likewise, the argument that spouses may feel embarrasses does not hold up to scrutiny, as spouses have no reason to feel embarrassed for being with their marriage partners. However, the survey by Gray-Ray, (2000) demonstrates that even men who participate in conjugal visits often participate in male-on-male sex acts between those visits, which means that the men are at increased risk of becoming HIV-positive and can then pass the virus on to their spouses. While Mississippi provides these men with condoms, there is no way the prison administration can force them to use them. Another serious concern with such a program is that these conjugal visits could easily result in pregnancy. In those cases where the prisoner was the wage earner in the family, it seems reasonable that the parents will not be able to support this child on their own.
CONCLUSION
Creating a conjugal visitation program would mean a considerable expense for our state's prison systems, because in order to do the problem well and have the best chance of influencing both prisoners...
Building apartments on a prison campus would cost more than building housing for the general public because of security needs. In Mississippi, more than one in three prisoners meet eligibility requirements (Gray-Ray, 2000).Assuming two three-day conjugal visits a month for 33% of prisoners (a number lower than Mississippi's), one apartment would be able to serve only five families. To serve a prison population of 10,000 prisoners would require over 650 apartments. Implementing conjugal visits well would be a costly program, and the research does not solidly demonstrate benefits to society either in a more sexually normalized prison population or by showing that the prisoners would return to stable family, which might reduce recidivism. The argument that conjugal visitations would ease the pain of imprisonment is one of the weakest of arguments; being in prison is not supposed to be pleasant. Significant potential problems for society exist, however, in the possibility that the HIV virus could be spread to spouses and the possibility of children being born to inmates who cannot financially support them. While the government rightly cannot inflict gratuitous discomfort on prisoners, this does not mean that the state is obligated to make the experience a pleasant one. A conjugal program would be expensive to implement with no guarantee of any significant benefit, and is not appropriate for our state's prison population.
Bibliography
Gray-Ray, Phyllis. 2000. "The Effects of Conjugal Visits on Mississippi Inmates." Corrections Compendium, April.
Hensley, Christopher; Tewksbury, Richard; and Wright, Jeremy. 2001. "Exploring the Dynamics of Masturbation and Consensual Same-Sex Activity within a Male Maximum Security Prison." The Journal…
