A man sits in his prison cell in an usually good mood.
Today is visiting day, but it’s not just any visit.
He’s going to get up close to his lover, a young woman on the outside who he wrote
to during his hefty sentence for robbery and murder.
Fast-forward a few hours and this same man calmly walks out of his cell and approaches
the mother of the woman, who’s waiting for her in another room.
He walks within a few yards of her and says, “I have just killed your daughter.”
Welcome to the world of conjugal visits.
What we just told you is a true story.
It happened in 2017 at a prison in Villa de las Rosas, Argentina.
The man was 39 and his girlfriend was 20.
There are some additions to this dark story, though, some very, very disturbing additions.
The victim and the killer had had a child together, a result of a previous conjugal
visit.
The two-month-old child was actually with her when she went into his cell.
Fortunately, the child was not hurt at all.
But there’s something else, this guy had killed his previous wife during another conjugal
visit a few years earlier.
He’d now killed two partners during such visits.
The mother of the second victim later said, “I told Andrea when she was about to give
birth that she should be careful of him because he is a murderer.”
As for the prison director, he told the media that in spite of what the guy had done in
the past he had every right to have a conjugal visit.
As you’ll see today, this ‘right’ is a matter of huge controversy.
Ok, so before we get into any more tales of when things went wrong, let’s first look
at why these visits exist in the first place.
The word conjugal basically means “together” and “wife”, so a conjugal visit is when
a prisoner can be with his wife, up close.
It usually means the legal spouse, but that’s not always the case.
It also means they have some privacy, often for the reason that the couple wants to get
it on.
That’s why they will get a private room, even one filled with soaps and towels and
stuff.
As for who’s allowed these special visits, it all depends on the country.
In those progressive Norwegian prisons, even convicted killers will for the most part be
afforded a nice little room where they can kiss and make love.
Other countries also have them, such as Germany, Russia, Brazil, and Denmark.
As you might already know, some prisons in South America look a bit like small towns.
Sometimes the prisoners seem to have the run of things, and sometimes they might even live
with their partner in the prison.
If those almost anarchic prisons changed this, there would be serious, bloody riots.
In the US, things are a bit different.
If you’re in federal prison, you won’t be getting a conjugal visit ever.
If you’re in state prison, it could be a different matter depending on which state
you’re serving time in.
Back in the 90s, 17 states allowed them, but after years of the public complaining that
prisoners needed to be treated harsher, things changed.
Now such visits only exist in the states of California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington.
Why would a prison allow them at all, some of you hardliners might think?
You’re not alone in thinking that.
For instance, the UK doesn’t allow them, although very low-risk prisoners might get
some home release time.
Still, the larger part of the public there, maybe spurred on by the tabloid media, is
dead set against such visits.
Ok, so before we talk more about the public, let’s tell you a story.
Back in the 1960s, Mississippi became the first US state to allow conjugal visits.
Before you start thinking, oh, how progressive of Mississippi, you should hear why the state
did it.
In fact, we’ll let a prison guard from back then explain in his own words.
When asked by a professor why such visits existed at the Mississippi prison, he replied,
“Give ‘em pork, some greens, some cornbread, and some poontang every now and then and they
would work for you.”
By ‘em, he was referring to the mostly black prisoners who each day were sent out into
the prison cotton fields and forced to work like slaves.
Basically, if they worked really hard they were rewarded with a conjugal visit on Sunday.
As one writer years later said, “Conjugal visits are a good policy, and they got their
start in America for the worst possible reasons.”
He called the prison a “slavery-era plantation” and explained that those visits were for nothing
else but to increase productivity and put more money in the hands of those that profited
from the slave labor.
Mississippi by the way, banned the practice in 2014.
That’s all very negative, but these days things have changed.
Prisoners in some states in the US may be allowed those visits because they are seen
as good for the prisoner’s mental health, the stability of the prison, and a way of
keeping families together.
Still, it’s unlikely a prisoner will ever get one if he or she doesn’t have an exemplary
prison record.
Plus, high-security prisoners or anyone on death row will never have such a visit, or
even anyone with a history of serious violence, especially against women.
In California, the prisoner will not only have to have a squeaky clean prison record,
but the prison will also do background checks on his family.
The visitor will have to wear certain clothes and they will also be rigorously checked for
any kind of contraband.
It goes without saying that no booze is allowed, neither are electronic devices.
Ok, so what goes down on one of these visits in the US?
An officer in New York working at Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville went on
record and explained this.
He said as part of the “Family Reunion Program” or what he snidely called the “Felon Reproduction
Program”, spouses and family can visit a prisoner in a private visitation trailer.
He said girlfriends were not allowed, but prisoners got around this by saying their
partner was a close relative.
As for those trailers, they have a kitchen, they have a bathroom; they have all sorts
of things because the couple staying in them will stay overnight.
That officer said there’s a TV, a PlayStation, and of course, you can take in lots of food.
As for the DVDs on offer, nothing above a G-rating is accepted.
Maybe the prison thinks that by watching a horror flick or a gangster flick the prisoner
might find some inspiration to commit another crime.
When the visit is over, the inmate is tested for drugs and alcohol, but seeing as he already
has an exemplary record there’s little chance he’d have smoked a blunt while watching
“Muppets from Space.”
Things generally don’t go wrong, although the officer said this:
“There was one time that an officer was doing rounds, and heard people screaming and
called an emergency response to go check it out.
It ended up being two people…”
You’ll have to fill in the last word yourself, because YouTube would demonetize us for doing
it for you.
According to the New York Times, just less than half of conjugal visits in the state
of New York are between spouses.
That same article cited research that concluded that those visits helped with a prisoner’s
behavior, cut down on sexual attacks in prison, and helped the prisoner reintegrate back into
society after his release.
Not everyone agrees or has a progressive mindsight.
A Republican State Representative in New York commented on how babies were made during such
visits, something he didn’t like at all.
He told the Times, “I don’t think it’s fair to the children conceived and to the
taxpayers.
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.”
Another person interviewed, the wife of a prisoner in for aggravated assault, had a
totally different opinion.
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.”
With those two opinions in mind, are conjugal visits a good thing?
Well, research in the US has indeed pointed to the possibility that they may cut down
on males sexually assaulting one another.
It happens a lot, so anything that might cut down on it would surely be welcomed.
A report by the Justice Department in 2012 said this, “In 2011–12, an estimated 4.0%
of state and federal prison inmates and 3.2% of jail inmates reported experiencing one
or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or facility staff in the
past 12 months.”
That’s a hell of a lot.
We found an interview in which an inmate said this, “I had no choice but to submit to
being the inmate's prison wife.
Out of fear for my life, I submitted to…”
Again, we can’t go into details due to moderation, but he submitted to many terrible things by
force.
Many scholars have written that conjugal visits will help reduce these attacks and also reduce
violence in other ways inside prisons.
A study published in the American Journal of Criminal Justice said this, “Those states
that allow conjugal visits have a significantly lower number of reported prison rape and other
sexual violence in their prisons.”
Another report concluded this, “The rate of sexual violence in states that allow conjugal
visitation is 57 incidents per 100,000 inmates, whereas in states that do not allow conjugal
visitation the rate is 226 per 100,000 inmates.”
Still, right now it seems there is very little chance of a mass expansion of conjugal visits
in the US.
For the most part, the public’s response is a state-to-state echo of, “Do the crime,
do the time” even if the polar opposite of rehabilitation is happening in many prisons.
It’s the same in the UK.
Not long ago, some prisoners tried to appeal to the courts by saying the prisons violated
the law under “Article 8 of the Human Rights Act: the right to family and private life.”
Some European countries, such as France and Spain, do allow such visits, but not the UK.
This is what some of the interviewed British public think about such visits:
“Let them suffer.
That is what prison is for…
In fact, they should only speak to outsiders through glass.”
Talking about glass, should prisoners even be allowed that close to visitors?
In 2017, news reports said that just about all US jails were ending face-to-face visits
even though those charged were awaiting a trial date and of course were innocent until
proven guilty.
In some jails, the inmates picked up a leaflet talking about how they could make a video
and it would be seen by their family.
The leaflet read, “Reading a bedtime story ... Never miss another moment…
Do you want to see your loved one more often?”
And all this for just $12.99 per video...
Things can of course go wrong when prisoners get up close to visitors, as you heard in
vivid detail in the introduction.
We looked high and low for other instances when a conjugal visit has turned into a bloody
disaster and it seems there haven’t been that many.
In the US, we found an instance in 1995 when a prisoner in Washington was shot by a guard
because he was in the process of stabbing his wife.
The guy, who was actually in for murder, was shot outside the conjugal-visit trailer.
He was hit in the shoulder and not badly injured, although his wife was in a serious condition
after being stabbed in the arms, neck, and face.
The prison after that said it would review its position on having knives in the trailers.
And as we said, these days it’s very unlikely a convicted killer will get such a visit.
When we say these kinds of stories are few and far between, we mean it.
Conjugal visits have proven not to be any kind of problem besides these cases that happened
decades apart and in different countries.
So, safety of the prisoner doesn’t seem to be an issue.
Budget is, as if the possibility of bringing in contraband, although if the prisoner has
been exemplary – and with this enticement, you’d think many would try to be – he
might think twice about breaking the rules.
With that in mind, you have to look at what just happened in Texas.
Just recently the state stopped in-person visits and limited mail due to the pandemic.
The state thought it would see fewer drugs in prisons, but that didn’t happen at all.
According to the Marshall Project, the vast majority of drugs were being brought in by
guards.
The Texas Tribune wrote, “Staff members and prisoners say the problem is worse, and
agency data shows guards are finding just as many drugs and writing up even more prisoners
for having them.”
In one prison there were more drugs than ever, because due to social distancing, guards were
not searching each other.
You can find similar reports in the UK that say officers bring in possibly the largest
amount of drugs, and even weapons and mobile phones.
We’re just making this point because many anti-conjugal visit people are anti because
of this reason, thinking these visits will mean prisons will become awash with drugs.
Err, they already are.
Still, visits are a major reason for that, too, so conjugal visits would have to be very
controlled.
What it really boils down to, though, is a matter of public sentiment.
Much of the public is against conjugal visits simply because they believe prisoners have
committed a crime and should have the right to intimacy taken away from them, lest prison
time becomes too easy.
We wonder what you viewers think.
Now you need to watch, “Insane Ways People Have Smuggled Things Into Prison.”
Or, have a look at, “Why Prisons Ban These Everyday Items.”