conjugal visit uk

Are conjugal visits allowed in the UK? Prison rules explained

The generally recognised basis for permitting such visits in modern times is to preserve family bonds

14:01, 6 NOV 2018

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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 their legal spouse.

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 life after release from prison.

They also provide an incentive to inmates to comply with the various day-to-day rules and regulations of the prison.

Neither the English , Welsh , Scottish , nor Northern Irish prison systems allow conjugal visits.

However, home visits, with a greater emphasis on building other links with the outside world to which the prisoner will be returned, are allowed.

These home visits are usually only granted to prisoners who have a few weeks to a few months remaining of a long sentence.

Furthermore, home visits are more likely to be granted if the prisoner is deemed to have a low risk of absconding (i.e. prisoners being held in open prisons have a better chance of being granted home visits than prisoner being held in closed conditions).

In the UK pressure exists to grant family visits and there is speculation that the law will face a serious challenge.

But a spokesperson for the Howard League for Penal Reform said the idea was "not particularly helpful".

She said: "Rather than having a wife or girlfriend come for the explicit purpose of having sex what you need is family days, in which sex can be a part.

"What's important is to preserve family ties during a prison term."

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Crime, justice and the law
Prisons and probation

Staying in touch with someone in prison

Visiting someone in prison.

You can make an online request to visit someone in prison in most cases.

You can only visit a prisoner if they’ve added you to their visitor list. The prison will contact you once you’re on this list.

Get help with the cost of visiting someone

You might be able to get help paying for a prison visit , for example travel costs, if you’re receiving certain benefits.

How often you can visit someone in prison

A convicted prisoner is usually allowed at least two 1-hour visits every 4 weeks.

A prisoner on remand (waiting for their trial) is allowed three 1-hour visits a week.

You can find out more about the exact rules on visits on the prison information page of the prison you’re visiting.

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Conjugal visits, erwin james - insidetime.

1st March 2009

‘Facilities must be provided to enable UK prisoners to enjoy conjugal visits’ , a landmark European court ruling concluded in February. By forbidding ‘sexual relations’ between prisoners and their visitors, the court decided that the British government was in breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act: the right to family and private life.

Of course there has been no such ruling – yet. But following the successful appeal to the Strasbourg court by six prisoners who argued that under Article 8 they should be allowed to provide sperm to their partners to enable them to become fathers, surely it is only a matter of time. The prisoners, all long-termers, had based their claim on the premise that they would be too old to father children if they were made to wait until they were released. Previously, the government had dismissed all such requests, unless it could be shown that there were ‘exceptional circumstances’.

The Strasbourg court ruled that this policy in effect set the bar ‘too high to allow proper consideration of the proportionality of any such decision’. Accordingly, the government must now consider each application on a case by case basis. Six applications requesting access to artificial insemination services are now on Justice Minister Jack Straw’s desk awaiting his considered decision, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice has confirmed.

The rights and wrongs of enabling men serving long sentences to father children, to whose upbringing they can only ever make a limited contribution, could be debated in perpetuity. Yet however outraged some may feel, it has long been established that people who are sent to prison do not forfeit their rights under the European Convention on Human Rights. So if the Strasbourg court agrees that prisoners are entitled to a family and private life, how can it not rule, when the appropriate case is brought before it, that people in prison are entitled to sexual relations with partners on the outside?

One of the cruellest aspects of imprisonment is the denial of sexual expression – outside of masturbation. Sex in prison in the UK is great unspoken that looms large but is never acknowledged in any serious way. It is no myth that in male prisons homosexual relationships thrive – between those who are naturally inclined towards same sex and those who on the outside would never consider having sex with men, but for whom the need for warm skin on warm skin intimacy is so overwhelming that they are driven to compromise. Prisoners having sex is a great taboo among prison officers, yet there is no bar against prisoner couples setting up home together in a shared cell – which is then referred to jovially by staff and prisoners alike as ‘married quarters’.

Transsexual prisoners often become popular with apparently ‘straight’ men: the female appearance of a prospective male sex partner, however vague, can be enough to authenticate the fantasy for many. The tragedy of those who succumb and who are then seen in the visits room indulging in awkward fumblings with wives and girlfriends is all too apparent.

No manifestly heterosexual prisoner would ever admit to any notion of sexual compromise, yet the trade in sexual services is rife: a hand job for tobacco, a blow job for drugs. Some men resort to raping others – assaults that occur more frequently than the authorities would care to admit. Even gang rape occurs occasionally, and rarely are the needs of the victims in such attacks taken seriously. Convictions in prisoner on prisoner rape cases are even more of a rarity. Less innocuously female members of staff, irrelevant of size, shape or looks, become objects of sexual fantasy – any woman who enters a male prison wearing a skirt knows that – and illicit relationships are not uncommon, though disgrace and humiliation awaits any prison worker who gets caught, while the prisoner simply gets a transfer.

The sexual frustration that dominates almost every interaction in a prison is responsible for a great many of the ills that plague prison life and drive prison culture. Anyone who takes a human rights case on the matter to Europe citing Article 8 should also be able to argue that prison life distorts sexual appetites and inflicts unquantifiable sexual damage from which many struggle to recover.

Conjugal rights for prisoners, already granted in some European countries including France and Spain, may not provide the whole solution – dysfunction, sexual or otherwise, is already the norm for the majority of people who end up behind bars – but the issue of how we deal with human sexuality for those held captive will have to be acknowledged and accommodated sooner or later. A genuinely humane prison system demands it.

What the public had to say …

‘Let them suffer. That is what prison is for. If they want children they can have them without regular sex with their partners on the outside some significant percentage will just smuggle in drugs. In fact they should only speak to outsiders through glass’.

‘I think I’m losing the will to live …they are in prison for a reason… surely they are supposed to have less rights? As for children that’s what the UK really needs right now … convicted criminals breeding like rabbits and producing more one parent families’.

‘Just when you think the EU couldn’t come up with more out of touch bollocks they always surprise you’.

‘Such wisdom Erwin! And to prevent a child’s right to a mother and father being violated, why not bring in a regulation allowing for automatic parole 9 months after conjugal relations leading to conception?’

‘Although I see Erwin James’ point about sexual frustration, I think he’s on shakier ground reference the right to a family. Doesn’t it encompass a child’s right to have its parents, as well as a prisoner’s right to ‘father’ a child? Perhaps the putative child’s welfare ought to be considered first in this instance?’

‘On what planet is it a good idea to let a woman who is in jail become pregnant when she will have to give birth in jail, probably restrained, and then give her baby away?’

‘What about unattached prisoners? Are you suggesting that the state pays sex workers to service these people?’

‘I can perfectly see that allowing conjugal rights would enable a prisoner to let off steam and have some physical intimacy with a woman he cares about. It must also make the atmosphere inside prison less tense. Indeed, it seems to be a win-win situation suiting everybody’.

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45 thoughts on “ Conjugal visits ”

I believe Finland have done it the correct way. They rehabilitate their prisoners and prepare them for their release into the outside world. Finland has one of the lowest reoffending rates in the world. What people don’t realise is that people in prison will serve different terms and they will be released. Is it not then counter productive to completely strip them of their rights, including the right to sexual intimacy, if all that encompasses is a higher reoffending rate when getting out?

If prisoners can be rehabilitated, wouldn’t that be better for the outside world? And the best way to do it, is to maybe not strip them completely of their rights? Not all sentences were handed to serial murderers, rapists and paedophiles. Those who can have some sort of reformation, should be given the opportunity to do so. Having a relationship with family and friends outside, and having a wife/partner and children; being able to hold them and have some sort of physical relationship would give them something g to hold onto and better appreciate what they have. This also helps lessen reoffending. I think people forget that there are many prisoners with a release date.

This petition needs sharing properly I’ve never seen it anywhere and has hardly any signatures on it and the time is almost up for it,it seems. It would really make a big difference to so many women wanting a family and the partners are in prison and like has been said before would help control behaviour on the inside.

https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/124487 please sign the petition share on fb or anywhere you think might help get signatures

My partner is 2 years into a 10 year sentence and a few months ago at the age of 35 I found out that my hormone level was very low and could continue to drop which could lead to me going on the menopause prematurely, I was adviced that to start a family immediately if that was my intentions as the longer I leave the less likely I would conceive, I explained to the doctor about my partner and they agreed to write a letter to support artificial insemination but the prison system being as it is I got no response and now it’s unlikely I will become a mum, you can’t help who you fall in love with but partners in the outside should not be punished, it’s heart breaking and I often sit down and think about how lonely life is and although he is half way through his sentence everyday I’m living on borrowed time as I can’t put time on when I will no longer be able to become a mum, this could finish my relationship when he his released as no one can predict the future and having children is something we both very much want, it kills me to say it but who knows how he will feel a few years down the line there isn’t anything stopping him from becoming a father, but me becoming a mother is very doubtful if the law doesn’t change, I know some people my think why are you still with him get out and meet some else if you want to be a mum now, but it’s not that easy I love the man I’m with and I hope the law can change

Hi what was your outcome if You don’t mind me asking I’m facing the same

Yes I do believe that they should allow them to have conjugal visits.yes i know that they have done bad things to get them selves inside jail but look at it this way if men get to have sex with there love ones it will slow down the man wanting to sleep with his own sex.I’m not judging people sexuality but not being able to have sex with there love one makes them to sleep with there own sex.I believe it might slow down the homeasexual..

Ladies we need to start a protest x

I completely Agree, am going to look into restarting a gov petition but we need to get as many people in our situation to sign and aware of it…. Let me get researching this and I’ll post soon xx

A government petition is online now please please sign it the law needs to change if there isn’t enough signatures by September 2016 nothing will be done this is our only chance to make a difference

Where do i find this petition i wanna sign it

I have to agree that conjugal visits should be allowed in the uk. My partner up is serving a 3 year sentence, and all I want is just to hug him for a few mins, or as someone says, lay with him just cuddling. I\’m terminally ill and have no idea if I will still be alive when her gets out – so we are having to live out life through letters.

I\’m not saying he shouldn\’t be punished, or that he shouldn\’t do his time, but there should be ways in which partners and families can still be together as it would make is easier for the one on he outside, and also make it easier when the prisoner is released as it must be like learning how to relate to your partner all over again.

I agree with all of the above, I was 25 when my husband was locked up i am now 34 no children and I go to bed every night wondering will I ever be a mother!!!!!! I go to work every day I have not committed any crimes. My human write to family have been taken away will my body be to old for children I often wonder?? by the time he does come home haw is this write?? Please don\’t judge a situation you have never been in every one in life makes mistakes

Agree with all of the above comments. Before my husband went away id have said no way to conjugal visits. Like a lot of posters it\’s his company I miss. Just laying in bed chatting in peace or a late night cuppa. A text message to tell them something that\’s happened. Trying to keep them updated as much as you can on the kids. He\’s 5m into a 4yr sentence. One drunken night out, a mistake. There is no privacy on our side when they get sent to prison. Calls are monitored so are letters. On visits you\’re scared to make contact as it means a strip search for them later. It\’s not just him who\’s being punished. My children are having to adjust. I worked for must beforehand around my hubby\’s work hours, I\’ve had to give this up and go on benefits. The judge didn\’t want to send Him to prison he had a full time job a good person, but due to sentencing laws he had to send him, and he needed to be punished. But at the moment, with me struggling I feel like I am being punished the most

This is to Ewa. I noticed you have only managed to get 20 signatures on your epetition, not great considering the amount of ppl who have a partner in a UK prison. You may need to put your petition out global. It\’s worth contactin Avaaz who are a global web movement who may be able to assist you with obtaining your 100,000 signatures which u need in order for conjugal visits to be debated in the House of Commons. Good luck.

I have read the comments above and its just heart breaking. my husband is serving a long sentence. we have children together who are really suffering without him as am I.The current system claims to promote bonding and sustain family ties but this is a lie! Our human rights are being breached. It is impossible for myself and my children to share an hour a month (he has parents siblings that also wish to see him at times taking up the second v.o)fighting for his attentions or for him to form a bond with our new baby. not all prisoners are guilty and we the family are certainly all free from any guilt, we should not be made so suffer so inhumanly with such high levels of apathy. depriving us of our right to a small form of a family life and only allowing us short public visits and 10 minute phone calls feels like I am mentally emotionally and physically being torture. nor should prisoners be dehumanized and allowed to have their rights taken to add to their punishment to please the public or lesson the efforts and responsibility of the Government. I believe if a group was formed and action taken a petition even as far as taking the government to court going as far as The E.U our case would be won. I am trying to form a group on Facebook family/conjugal visits. support the forgotten victims Community Family/conjugal visits. support the forgottenvictims I also post on a page under the same name I hope that you will join me in this effort as we can not do this alone.

15 years away, he is now 42, another 5 years left! 5 mins wud b sufficient, ha!, the law says no, the outsiders say yes, its the closeness of couples that shud b important, i agree with punishment being important. let them rot is a good saying…if he killed some1 premeditated or children, old people etc, but he had a car chase and a copper died, any1 else wud of got 7 maybe 8 yrs an b out by now…i\’m not condoning his behaviour, but the facts r he wud b out by now if it was a civilian…i havent got children but i am ready 4 them and cant wait 4 his release…lets just hope my biological clock hasnt ticket by then

If you want to help to get the conjugal visits in UK please sign the e-petition! I am in same situation as comments above and I want to try do anything what I can to allow those visits in UKs prisons. I cannot write the link here so just please try this writing as link:

epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/64247

I too have a partner serving 7 years and as Henreeta above, I whole heartedly agree, just to have a lay down and a close cuddle would be heaven. I miss my man badly. At visits, 2 a month, you are watched like a hawk and have a table between you and can hold hands that is about it. Just to feel your partner\’s arms around you, closely for a longer period than just a hug, would be heaven right now.

I am a 23yr old woman who has suffered with endometriosis and recently had an operation for it and have been advise to start trying for a baby now if I want one which I do.. However my boyfriend had to do time after a drunken fight and got out in november on licence, he has now been recalled for breaching his 7pm curfew as I was rushed to hospital now he has to do the rest of his licence inside! I do not think its fair that I have to suffer even more knowing I will prob never get to have a child as my illness can cause trouble and come back anytime! Getting pregnant would help my illness aswel as give me and my partner what we have wanted for years! A man can go and rape sum1 and brutally murder them and get out after 5yrs and live happily ever after, even get there identity changed.. but yet ppl who commit petty crime, self defense suffer more and so do us partners think the goverment need there heads testing if u ask me! What have I done wrong to deserve this??

I\’m all for conjugal visits my partner has another 10 years to serve and we both want children together we will be 40 by the time he\’s up for parole which he isn\’t guaranteed. I also think they should be approved because like other have stated it would make the prison place a better place to be not only for the prisoners but for the staff to. My partner has told me that himself and his friends have said that if that was to go forward that every prisoner in there would be on their best behaviour and not getting into trouble knowing that they could have a conjugal visit even if it was just once a month so it has my vote

@Don\’t Judge. Interesting that you call yourself \’Don\’t Judge\’ and then go on to judge by listing crimes you think deserve punishment but consider other crimes, apparently, blameless.

Every crime has a victim and every victim will react differently. Look at that elderly man beaten to a pulp recently by thugs intent on robbing him. Do they deserve their sentence?

I sincerely hope that conjugal visits are granted in the UK prisons! All you that judge unfairly should meet a prisoner that is truly sorry for their actions. I\’m guessing you people are assuming that lifers have must all be cold killer\’s. Yes some have committed crimes that cannot be overlooked, rapists of small children, serial killer\’s they deserve their sentence but don\’t judge a prisoner by their sentence length or the crime they committed some people kill to protect their family, if someone tried to rape my children I wouldn\’t think twice before putting a knife to their neck! Does this make me an evil person, NO it makes me a loving parent. Well my point is that some lifers don\’t deserve to be serving the sentence they got handed! Many people agree that America has a brilliant justice system because of the 3 strikes law and even they allow conjugal visits. These prisoners are serving their time with no freedom, no luxuries, nothing other than the bare minimums, if they are allowed to be loved intimately for at least 1-2 hours every other week that\’s not harming you judgemental ppl any is it?!!! And if it leads to better behaviour and helps them to evaluate their actions isn\’t this better for everyone! Bring in conjugal visits. Sign the epetition at direct gov!!

Honestly some of you who have posted comments about this article are not living in he rel world. How can you judge and comment on something that you have no clue about. Live through it and then see how it feels to be living with a partner on the inside and then lets see if you would still have the negative judgmental attitudes you have now. There are many reasons why some people end up in prison and not all people in there are terrible people who deserve to be punished and deprived of sexual contact with there partners and the partners certainly don\’t deserve it. Even if visits like this were allowed they are still being punished because they have to watch there partners walk out the door in the knowledge that they have to stay locked away. Prison can cause serious damage to some people\’s mental state and to have that little bit of intimacy would remind these prisoners that they are still human beings and not just robots living the same day over and over.

can some1 get a message to my son arron? now hes been turned into jodie!! I KNOW hes been atwat in jail same when he was home, but wamt to let him know hes coming home , and we all here for him xx dad xx

i agree with everyone above… i have been with my boyfriend on and off for 5 years every now and again he gets low and says he wants me to be happy and that we cant be together because its not fair which is hard i love him so much and he loves me i dont visit him because i cant come out the house without someone with me i havent seen him in 4 years it will be next month i miss him every day. i understand that hes in jail because he committed a crime and he is doing is time but it is hard for us partners on the outside why should we be punished aswell. me and my partner talk in our letters about wanting to get married and have a baby. its not the same writting letter especial when they are sometimes held back from the prisoners or they get transfered. i with give anything to just sit and have a cuddle and be able to make plans for out future in private. my heart breaks everyday when i cant see him and even more so when i get a letter off him thats low and appologising and saying i deserve better. you cant help who you fall in love with and those off us who choose to be faithful and stand by our partners shouldnt be punished as well we have rights as well as out partners… i would marry him in a heart beat but i really dont want to get married in a jail as its not very dream wedding and im not getting any younger and i want a baby so much… i think the people that say they deserve it and let them rot etc are out off order some off the people are in there and shouldnt be and others are in there because of a stupid mistake but there in jail they cant go out and get fresh air when ever they want they are locked up at night they cant cuddle there partners or even kiss and they have no privacy even when they get visits because there is the officers watching and there is a room full off people

how do we go about fighting this to change the law on these visits? i don\’t agree that these should just be given but earned by prisoners and proof of marriage or common law partners and for men on long sentences. let do something about this and get the law changed…… where do i start though who do i contact???

Did you ever find out how to start making changes? I need to do something I can’t live knowing he will be in prison for the rest of his life with no intimacy I can’t bear it my heart is broken

good post. thanks i like it

I agree with the women above. my husband is looking at 10 years and yes a sexual relationship is important but to just have 5mins in his arms when i can forget about struggling to pay bills, balance work and visits and deal with the questions from those outside. before all of this i would have said they are in prison for a reason. Everyone always forgets about those on the outside who are being punished because of who they chose to marry. intermacy makes the time easier for both parties.

My partner is currently serving a 12 year sentence for a crime he didn\’t commit, a crime for which there was no evidence. He is the most loving, caring and attentive partner, he doesn\’t deserve this, I know for a fact it would greatly help both of us to have some alone time, a cuddle in privacy, I wouldn\’t have sex with him in prison but just to be alone would make the world of difference. A year has gone by and we long for his appeal but we know that it could be impossible, his trial started on our daughters 1st birthday, we would do anything to be a family again. Conjugal visits would make the next few year go by alot quicker and enhance his mental state as he has taken it very hard. You cannot judge until your in this situation, you asked me this question 2 years ago and I would have said absolutely not but no I totally understand why they are important

My partner of 7 years was given a life sentence An would love to spent even 5 mins just cuddling up to him. We are fighting to get him home as we know he’s innocent as others were involved. We have a gorgeous 6 year old daughter who misses him so much as my other kids. But to have even 5 mins just me An him without eyes watching all the time is a dream that a wish could become reality.

I too agree with some of the comments above it is easy for a person who has never been inside or visited a prison to disagree with a prisoner to have rights to a family but as said above bad things happen in this life and not all people in prison deserve to be there, my partner is in prison got a life sentence and he is innocent my heart breaks every single day and knowing we might not be able to prove his innocence before its too late for children is a harsh reality we are both young and we are appealing this but its going to take time and money and not being able to be intimate is hard for not just him but me too we wanted a baby before he was wrongly imprisoned and now we face a fight to have a child when there are teenagers getting pregant and giving up kids they cant look after & father who are noti n prison not looking after their kids who\’s to say becasue a father is in prison a child wont be loved and looked after who is monitoring the women on the outside and determining if there kids will be looked after correctly…no women would want to have sexual intercouse with their husband or boyfriend in prison and have a baby if they werent sure its what they want…i believe these visits should be avaialbe to those men serving a long sentence and who are in a stable relationship!!! maybe it would make the prison atmosphere nicer too.

Are you still with your partner now? My partner has just received a life sentence and he’s innocent we are both completely devastated. We were planning on having a child next year and I can’t even begin to imagine how we will cope without physical intimacy for the rest of our life it is heartbreaking I pray the UK approve conjugal visits for the improved mental health of long term prisoners and their partners 🙁

one thing that strikes me, is the fact that it didnt mention how it would help the partner on the outside too. my partner was sentenced to seven years, but it seems just because hes my husband, i should be punished too? i dont even need to have a sexual encounter with him, i would just love to be able to lay down in his arms in private, just for five minutes. yes he committed a crime, so yes he should be punished, in which he is. but why should I? dont focus just on the prisoner, remember the partner suffers too!

Absolutely agree, loved ones on the outside suffer hugely.

The reality is, not every prisoner is a mass murdering rapist freak. I think the Humans Rights Act,the Childrens Act and many others are what seperate the Third world from the Western world. It is a Human right, not a privalige, so when we are in support of the laws that put the people you talk about behind bars remember, its those same laws that acknowledge the right to a family. Im in support of this if rehabilitation, close moitoring of partnerships and financial independance (free of the state) are at appropriate levels.

I can\’t see how people who have never stepped foot inside a prison be it for visiting or another reason can judge. The proposal is not just for people serving 12 months or a few weeks it is for those with long sentences. Those with life or IPP or length determinate sentences. Prisons were established to remove a persons\’ liberty, not actually as a punishment and the statement of purpose it follows shows this. Prisoners who are serving say in excess of 10 years would be much calmer and relaxed knowing they are able to be intimate with their partner as it removes the doubt they will stray for it. Not only this but it as it is the partner of the prisoner is punished for remaining faithful. People only judge those in prison by the worst cases that they hear but have any of you who criticise and get on your soapbox ever stopped and looked at their backgrounds for example. How many of you whingers have had a family member addicted to drugs or alcohol? Knowing preachers like you, you walked away rather than offering support thus pushing them further into the downward spiral. So get off your high horses, it doesn\’t hurt you, get over it!

can i say , jane, i have stuck by mates in jail and my son arron, we have learned to live without the (idiot) for the last 8 years, but have been in touch with mates he has made and thankful to them, i lost control of arron and he went the jail way! i have been in touch with many inmates, a letter, cash, mates always.. some can judge by what happened but not know all the facts/ realities i work as a counsellor and encourage face to face talk, let those that accuse be open and honest ??

i totally agree with you my fiancee is serving half of a 5 year sentence we lost our baby at 13 weeks pregnant and he got put on trial and he got wrongly found guilty were currently trying to get his sentence minimised or revoked if thats the right word but yes i agree in the visits too helps prisoners reform and think well they have a possible family waiting for them when they get released they have womething to aim for and somrthing to say no im not going to do such and such crime because i have a baby , child , wife ect to go home to

I think those of u who could never Imagine your spouse going to prison cause someone broke into ur house and in defence of his family stopped his family from harm but had to serve time so he doesn\’t deserve the right to hold his wife and spend private time with them u all live in world where bad things don\’t happen the world is real and none of u are real enough to appreciate what a break down a situation can cause I can afford to have a child as I to pay taxes but not being able to touch my partner or subjected to officers watching our every move. You never know what\’s around the corner so all who say never u should know u shouldneber say never cause never had a way of biting u on the ass.

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Examining the Duration and Rules for Prison Visits in the UK

Visitations play a vital role in maintaining ties between inmates and their loved ones while they serve out their sentences. But visits are administered under strict supervision and limitations. For those hoping to see friends or family inside, how long can they expect to spend together on a typical prison visit in the UK? In this comprehensive guide, we will examine the standard visitation duration along with the various regulations governing these cloely monitored encounters.

Overview of Visitation Rights

Prisoners in the UK are permitted to have regular visitors throughout their sentence, with some exceptions:

Inmates on remand awaiting trial may have restrictions placed on visitations.
Those segregated for behavioral issues may have visits temporarily suspended.
Individuals banned under restraining orders cannot visit the inmate.

Barring such special circumstances, most prisoners can receive regular visitors who are family members or existing friends. Prisoners submit a list of approved visitors they wish to see.

Visits take place in a dedicated room under observation by guards. Physical contact like hugs or hand-holding is typically now allowed for security reasons. Conversations can be monitored to prevent suspicious activity.

Typical Visitation Duration

The length of a standard social visit session for an adult inmate to receive friends/family is:

1 hour – This is the most common duration allocated. Sufficient time is given for meaningful conversation and connection. Some flexibility may be allowed such as combining two 1 hour slots consecutively.
30 minutes – For young offenders under 18 or in certain high-security conditions, visits may be set at just 30 minutes per session.
2 hours – Some facilities may permit sessions up to 2 hours for family events like a child’s birthday or graduation. Special occasions warrant more generous time.

So for adult prisoners in general population, one hour is the standard visit duration before parties must conclude their encounter and exist the secured visitation area.

Factors That May Limit Visitation Time

While one hour is the typical duration, certain factors can result in shortened visit times:

Local staffing shortages that disrupt scheduling
Security lockdowns or disciplinary issues with the inmate
Visitor showing up late and missing available slots
Non-family visitors such as friends or associates
Newly incarcerated inmates still in intake processing phase
History of contraband being passed during visits

Unless officially restricted for disciplinary reasons, most inmates eventually do work up to the standard one hour visitation allowance once settled into the routine at their assigned prison.

Number of Visits Allowed Per Week/Month

In addition to capping visit duration, prisons also limit the frequency, spread out to maintain security.

Typical allowance for number of visits per month:

2-3 – General population inmates are allowed 2-3 visits per month from their approved list.
1 – Higher risk category inmates may only receive 1 visit per month to discourage gang/criminal activity.
4 – Benchmark of good behavior can qualify prisoners for up to 4 visit sessions per month.

So for inmates exhibiting compliance and progress in rehabilitation, most UK prisons offer between 2 and 4 visits per month of 1 hour duration each.

Special Types of Visits

Beyond routine social visits from friends/family, some other unique visit types have their own duration rules:

Legal visits – No limit on duration or frequency. Solicitors can access clients when needed.
Family days – Special event annually or biannually with 5+ hour duration spent visiting.
Overnight visits – Low risk inmates allowed 1-2 day visit per year from spouse/family.
Official/social services visits – As needed for prisoner welfare and cooperation.

While regular visits operate under tight constraints, flexibility is offered for legal needs, rehabilitation, and maintaining family ties.

Visitor Qualifications and Approval Process

To maintain prison safety and prevent smuggling, visitors must pass screening:

Existing relationship from prior to incarceration – family, spouse, close friends. No new acquaintances.
Approval forms submitted and verified by staff. Criminal background checks conducted.
No banned items carried in or worn by visitors per scanning and searches.
Official ID cards or documentation required to confirm claimed identity and relationship.
All visits pre-arranged by appointment following visitation request submission procedures.
Children permitted only with guardian supervision.

The approval procedure often takes 4-6 weeks requiring patience. But this careful vetting of visitors is essential to preserving prison order.

Positive Impacts of Visitations

While highly regulated, visitations provide wide-ranging benefits:

For inmates – Maintains family bonds. Boosts morale and motivation. Incentive for good behavior. Crucial mental health support. Grounds prisoners in reality.
For visitors – Allows active role in inmate’s welfare. Eases reintegration later. Keeps relationship intact. Provides oversight and reduces worry.
For prisons – Improved inmate compliance and cooperation. Decreased disciplinary incidents and violence. Encourages participation in rehabilitation programs.

Despite limitations required for safety, visitations deliver advantages that extend far beyond the individuals directly participating in these scenic encounters.

Video Visitation Options

Some UK facilities offer video visitation as an alternative to in-person visits:

Remote video visits – Visitors at home can schedule and conduct monitored video calls with inmates. More convenient but less personal.
On-site video terminals – Stations inside the prison allow virtual visits when in-person isn’t possible.

Video visits enable more frequent communication opportunities for families separated by distance. But most still prefer in-person visits when permitted for the human connection.

COVID-19 Impacts on Prison Visitation

The coronavirus pandemic resulted in an extended suspension of in-person visitation given the health risks:

From March 2020 onward, UK prisons banned in-person visits and restricted all access from outsiders.
Exceptions were made only for essential medical staff and legal advisors with PPE precautions.
Virtual visits became the temporary norm using online portals and secure video calling systems.

While vital for infection control, the long-term denial of in-person visits placed strain on inmates and families alike. Virtual visits helped fill the void but were an imperfect substitute for face-to-face interaction.

For UK inmates and their loved ones, precious visits are administered under tight constraints but remain essential lifelines. One hour is the standard duration for general population prisoner visits to balance meaningful engagement with security. The frequency is also capped at 2-4 visits monthly for well-behaved inmates. While restrictive, these reasonable limitations allow inmates to maintain bonds that improve welfare and incentive for rehabilitation. The vetting process ensures visitors are known relations without risk factors. By working within the stringent ground rules, inmates and families can safely uphold lifeline connections in the brief moments they share physically together.

FAQ About Prison Visits in the UK

How are visitors and inmates supervised during visits.

Guards observe visits from a distance. Conversations may be monitored. Non-contact rules are enforced, except some touching between parents and young children.

Can prisoners have conjugal visits with a spouse or partner?

No, conjugal visits are not normally permitted in UK prisons. The exception is 1-2 overnight family visits may be allowed annually in low security facilities.

What reasons can lead to an approved visitor being banned?

Threats of violence, repeatedly violating policies, attempting to smuggle contraband, disruptive behavior, intoxication, inappropriate attire, etc.

Are phone calls also monitored along with in-person visits?

Yes, phone conversations are subject to the same restrictions and monitoring as in-person visits to prevent criminal activity.

How has COVID impacted prison visitation rules?

The pandemic resulted in an extended suspension of normal in-person visits to protect inmates and staff from infection. Video and virtual visits became the temporary alternative.

Are ex-prisoners allowed to visit current inmates as mentors?

Sometimes, former inmates who have undergone rehabilitation can be approved for mentorship visits. But extensive screening for contraband risks occurs in such instances.

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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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So What are the Actual Rules with Conjugal Visits and How Did They Get Their Start?

To begin with, in Britain, conjugal visits aren’t a thing, though in some cases when prisoners who have been locked up for a long period are getting close to their release date, if they are considered particularly low risk for committing crimes or going off on their merry way, they may be allowed to have family leave time for brief periods. This is time meant to help re-acclimate them to the world outside of prison and get their affairs in order, including re-connecting with family and friends, looking for work, etc.- all as a way to try to help said person hit the ground running once fully released.

Moving across the pond to the United States, first, it’s important to note that prisoners in federal custody and maximum security prisons are not allowed conjugal visits. Further, in the handful of states that do allow conjugal visits, prisoners and their guests must meet a stringent set of guidelines including full background checks for any visitors. On the prisoner’s side, anyone who committed a violent crime, has a life sentence, is a sex offender, and other such serious crimes are also not eligible. Further, in Connecticut, if an inmate is a member of a gang or even thought to be so, they are also banned from conjugal visits. On top of that, pretty much everywhere, any inmate who does anything wrong whatsoever while in prison also finds themselves either temporarily or permanently banned from such visits.

This brings us to how the whole conjugal visit thing got its start in the United States; the earliest official-ish policy with regards to allowing, in this case male, prisoners to enjoy the company of the fairer sex started in the Mississippi State Penitentiary (Parchman Farm) in the early 20th century. This was instituted as a way to get its black prisoner populace, who were used pretty literally as slave labor, to work harder while working the 20,000 acres of land at this institution. In fact, the superintendent of the prison at the time was actually a farmer himself, which is why he was hired to oversee things. As historian David M. Oshinsky, author of Worse Than Slavery: Parchman Farm and the Ordeal of Jim Crow Justice , notes, “[The Administrator’s] annual report to the legislature is not of salvaged lives. It is a profit and loss statement, with the accent on the profit.”

Prisoners who didn’t work hard could be beaten and other such “stick”-type incentives leveraged. On the other hand, prisoners who worked hard, were willing to help keep their fellow prisoners in line, etc. etc. were given various rewards. In fact, in the extreme, a prisoner who managed to kill another prisoner attempting to escape could even be rewarded with a full pardon for that and whatever crime they’d previously committed to get locked up in the first place.

Most pertinent to the topic at hand, for those prisoners who were particularly well behaved and worked the hardest, one reward they could be given was the company of a prostitute on their Sunday off-day. To help facilitate this, every Sunday a literal truck load of women would be brought in to tend to the best behaved prisoners. Later, the policy was expanded to include girlfriends and wives for the men who preferred their company.

To illustrate the thinking of the prison officials in perhaps the most offensive way possible, we have this time-capsule of a quote from one contemporary prison guard from Mississippi- “You gotta understand that back in them days n***ers were pretty simple creatures. Give ‘em pork, some greens, some cornbread, and some poontang every now and then and they would work for you.”

Moving very swiftly on from there, the effectiveness of promised sex for a male prisoner, regardless of race, if they toed the line caught on and, as the century progressed, around 1/3 of the states in the U.S. eventually adopted the practice, as well as many other countries through the 20th century also instituting similar programs.

As for that effectiveness, former warden of Great Meadow Correctional Facility in New York State, Arthur Leonardo, explains, “We don’t have much to give to people in prison. If you don’t have anything to take away from someone, you don’t have anything to take away to urge them to do the right thing.”

Illustrating the effectiveness on the prisoner’s side, one Ray Coles, whose temper resulted in an assault that saw him given a nine year prison sentence, states of the incentive the conjugal visits give him to never step out of line, “Every action or choice I make is made with my wife in mind.”

As for what actually goes on during a conjugal visit, the Hollywood idea and reality, as ever, are somewhat different. While in film and TV shows, a conjugal visit is a time to get hot and sweaty with your partner, the reality is that, while sex may or may not be involved, much of the time is spent just doing normal things with not just a partner, but kids and other family members. In fact, in New York, it’s reported that around 40% of conjugal visits don’t include a spouse or the like, rather often just children and other loved ones. For this reason, these visits are usually officially called things like “Extended Family Visits” or, in New York, the “Family Reunion Program”.

As one California inmate summed up of his extended family visit with his partner, “I got to spend 2 1/2 days one-on-one with my partner, my best friend, my confidant, my life partner. It wasn’t about the sex.”

For further context here, in the United States for most prisoners, at best during normal visitation they might be allowed a brief 2 second hug with their partner and a peck on the cheek, if the latter is allowed at all. On top of that, everything you say or do is being watched, and the time together is relatively brief.

As you can imagine from this, for many prisoners, regardless of their crime, whatever prison sentence was doled out often comes with a generally unmentioned punishment of the finishing of a relationship with their partner. Combined with limited access to phones and the extreme expense of prison and jail phone calls, this also often sees a near complete disconnect from their kids, friends, etc. while in prison.

Thus, for prisoners, while sex may or may not be involved, the reality of the extended family visit is just that- depending on the exact rules for a given prison, 6-72 hours where you can spend time with your partner, kids, and sometimes other family members or friends in a somewhat normal setting, doing normal things.

As for frequency, while in movies it’s a regular thing, and little lead up time, in reality in the United States, this may be granted at best once per month all the way up to once per year, or not at all.

Towards the end of facilitating family bonding, many prisons that allow this provide a couple bedrooms to accommodate a couple and their kids, as well as things like board games, a TV, and potentially food, though costs of things like food are footed by the inmate or their loved ones. For reference, the wife of the aforementioned Ray Coles, Vanessa, states she pays around $100 per extended family visit for things like food, which is then provided by the prison.

As for regions outside the United States, places like Canada allow for extended family visits up to 72 hours in length once every couple months, including allowing anyone with a close familial bond to take part, even friends if the authorities deem the bond strong enough. As in the United States, food and other such items are paid for by the inmate or their family or friends.

Interestingly one of the most generous of the nations when it comes to family visits is Saudi Arabia, which allows a once a month visit; but if you have multiple wives, you get once per month per wife! On top of that, beyond allowing such frequent visits, the government actually pays for the travel of those coming to see you.

Back over in the United States, at its peak in the late 20th century, extended family visits were allowed in about 1/3 of states, but began dropping precipitously starting around the 1980s and 1990s to just four states today- California, Washington, New York, and Connecticut.

This was around the same time a number of such programs designed to keep people from being repeat jailbirds were given the axe across the nation, unsurprisingly directly corresponding to the prison population in the United States absolutely exploding, in the four decades since rising an astounding 500%! For reference, before the 1980s, the growth was relatively slow and steady, more or less tied to population growth. More on this in the Bonus Fact in a bit.

As for the impetus for cutting the extended family visit programs, this is generally tied to increased public sentiment starting around the 1980s and 1990s that prisoners are there to be punished, not to be coddled, and that the program costs too much. For example, in New Mexico, who relatively recently killed the extended family visit program, it was costing taxpayers about $120,000 per year.

Now, this might sound like a lot, and if you go read the news reports, this was certainly used as the driving political rhetoric to get the program nixed by the politicians involved. However, it’s noteworthy that New Mexico reports an average cost per inmate annually is a whopping $35,540, which is pretty close to the national average of about $31,000…. Meaning the entire extended family visit program was costing about what it costs to house just over 3 of their approximately 16,000 inmates per year.

Of course this is still costing taxpayers something… except when you consider, for example, a 1982 study done on New York’s prison populace which found that prisoners who were allowed extended family visits were almost 70% less likely than other prisoners to end up back in prison within three years. This makes it potentially the single most effective recidivism program known, even soundly stomping on the second king of recidivism programs- education, which we’ll talk a bit more about in the Bonus Facts.

As to why family visits seem so effective at reducing recidivism, as the aforementioned warden Arthur Leonardo, notes, those who are able to maintain family bonds while in prison, when they get out, have “someone who loves you and will help you, and in the case of children, people who depend on you…”

Going back to the reality of an extended family visit, it’s usually required that partners and the inmates be tested for STDs and come out clean before being allowed to have their little rendezvous. Further, the prisoners themselves are strip searched both before the extended family visit and after. Should they test positive for drug or alcohol use after, they are then banned from future visits indefinitely, and those who brought in the contraband may also be banned from taking part again.

On top of that, those that are visiting the prisoners must be cleared as well, though strip searches, at least in the United States, are not allowed on the visitors, so contraband may occasionally be smuggled in in certain orifices or the like. To try to get around this in, for instance California, inmates and their families are searched regularly during the extended family visits, usually at a rate of about once every four hours.

This brings us to what you can bring for an extended family visit. Well, not much- mostly just things like clean linens, certain toiletries, strictly regulated clothing, and the like. No cell phones, no electronic devices, and really not much of anything else. Even things like family pictures are pretty strictly regulated in number, type, and size. Going back to clothing, one Myesha Paul, wife of California inmate Marcello Paul who is in prison for robbery, states, “They don’t want you to have anything that’s form fitting… although we come with hips and all that, so it’s kinda hard to find what don’t fit around, you know? I just buy some men’s sweat pants and make it work.”

If you go look at the California regulations on this, they also have strict regulations when it comes to colors of clothing, for example no blue denim or forest green pants, no tan shirts, no camouflage, nothing strapless, no skirts or dresses or non-capri shorts- the list goes on and on.

Myesha also helpfully describes what a real extended family visit is like, stating, “We sat outside and played dominoes on Saturday. After that we went in and watched TV, watched movies.” And while she states her and her husband do have sex during the visit, as is almost universally noted by every other inmate and their partner we looked it, it’s more about the closeness and little things like getting to hold your partner’s hand or just hold them in general, as well as waking up next to them. She states, “It feels good… because I don’t get that at home. Ya know. At home I’m sleeping by myself, unless my grandbaby or one of my kids wanna sleep with me. But they’re grown. But they still do sleep with me sometimes. But other than that, you know, I’m waking myself up in the morning, or the alarm clock is waking me up, or my grandson comes and wakes me up. It’s good to have my husband waking me up. It’s the nicest thing about being married. Isn’t it? Waking up?”

She also states of her husband, “He watches me through the night… I know he does ’cause sometimes I wake up and he’s looking at me. And I do the same to him. Sometimes he’s sleeping and he wakes up and I’m watching him.”

Similarly summed up by the aforementioned Vanessa Coles, the value of extended family visits is about keeping her family together- “It keeps our bond going, keeps our marriage strong and keeps him on track.” As for the couple’s young kids, “The little one needs it because that’s all he knows. The older one needs it to remember what he knows.” And as for those arguing against allowing such visits, she states, “[The prisoners] are being punished. I get it. [But] destroying your marriage and family should not be a part of your sentence.”

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Bonus Facts:

Going back to what caused the massive spike in U.S. incarcerations starting in the 1980s that has more or less continued unabated since, one thing often pointed to is that this was around the time the war on drugs was ramped up, generally considering to account for about 25%-50% of the increase in inmate population. This still leaves the rest, which is the majority. And unless you just think U.S. citizens are far more likely to commit crimes than, for example, our European brethren, obviously there is something weird going on. As to what, a variety of factors are pointed to including the cutting of many programs designed to keep people from being repeat offenders, marked increase in sentence length, especially compared to the rest of the world for similar crimes, and perhaps the catch-all which has driven a lot of this to the extreme- the privatization of prisons that occurred at this time, making many prisons for-profit institutions.

In the decades since, these entities have heavily lobbied for things that seem pretty directly tied to doing everything possible to make prison sentences longer and keep people coming back for more- most pertinent to the topic at hand, cutting costs wherever possible for themselves, including any and all recidivism programs. After all, they get paid per inmate, so aren’t too concerned with what the total cost is to the state, other than the greater that cost, the more they make.

Naturally, the longer sentences and increased likelihood of repeat offenders, at a rate of about 45% within 3 years and 76% within five, has seen prison populations skyrocket in the United States since the 1980s. The net result of all of this being that, at present, the land of the free currently houses almost one quarter of all inmates imprisoned in the entire world! The cost of housing these inmates comes to about $50-$70 billion annually. This does not include the police and judicial costs that get the prisoners put there in the first place- all summing up to massive sums of money being spent and many more crimes being committed while proven recidivism programs that see massive reductions in repeat offenders going largely unused. And noteworthy here is that about 95% of prisoners do get out at some point.

And speaking of recidivism programs like extended family visits, a study done by the United States Department of Justice noted that prisoners given access to educational programs were, for vocational certificates 14.6% less likely to find their way back in prison within 3 years vs. the general prison populace. For those achieving a GED while in prison, they were 25% less likely to end up back in the slammer. And those who attained an Associates degree were the highest of all in their study at about 70% less likely, approximately the same benefit as those given access to extended family visits.

Averaging it all out, the net effect of the educational programs was about a 43% reduction in rate of returning to prison within 3 years. From this, crunching the numbers, the study showed that this meant for every $1 spent by the states towards educating prisoners, it saved $5 annually thanks to the reduction of prison population, let alone other cost savings in court and police expenditures and, of course, a reduction in crime rate. Given each year about 700,000 inmates are released in the United States, that amounts to a massive reduction in crime, while a rather large increase in a better educated and more skilled populace.

Finally, one more bonus fact- while violent criminals are almost always seen as the most dangerous and most likely to re-offend by the general public, the data does not back that up at all- not even close. According to the United States Department of Justice, the highest rate of re-offenders within 3 years after being released were those stealing motor vehicles at 78.8%! Next up are those in prison for selling stolen property at 77.4%. The list goes on and on, but essentially, those who steal are generally about 70%+ likely to re-offend within 3 years and are the highest at-risk re-offenders. In stark contrast, violent crime convicts are massively less likely to re-offend. For example, rapists and murderers are only 2.5% and 1.2% likely to re-offend respectively. Of course, the latter is much more news worthy and traumatic, leading to the skewed public perception.

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No Laughing Matter
Mississippi Ending Conjugal Visits
How Conjugal Visits Work
States That Allow Conjugal Visits
Conjugal Visits Correlate to Fewer Sexual Assaults
Conjugal Visits Rules and History
Extended Family Prison Visit
One Conjugal Visit
Conjugal Visits
California Inmate Visitation
San Quentin Visitation
Prison Visits
The Conjugal Visit
Canada Visiting an Inmate
Pennsylvania Visiting Rules
National Crime and Justice
Conjugal Visits Not Practical
Australia Conjugal Visits
South Dakota Corrections
United States Incarceration Rate
New Mexico Incarceration Statistics
New Research on Prison Education
State of Phone Justice
Cost of Incarceration

I can’t comment on everything in the bonus facts, but I think the low (1.2%) re-offending rate for murder can be put down to two things: (1) they receive very long sentences (if not actually executed!), and so leave prison in their old age, and (2) they were more likely to have committed a crime of passion, rather than be career criminals. For that matter, I read that, at Devil’s Island, the murderers looked down on the thieves. Murder might be a worse crime, but it was usually the only one they committed, while the thieves were habitual criminals. (That might be a reason behind the high re-offending rate for stealing cars and receiving stolen goods.)

You might want to look that up because it is actually not correct. Depending on the severity of the crime murder can carry as little as a 5 year sentence, and remember it is not uncommon to serve as little as one quarter of the issues sentence. Also, execution is remarkably rare with many US states banning it or in moratorium. For a detailed state by state list of murder recommended sentences see this wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_punishments_for_murder_in_the_United_States

Staying Well
The Journey
Stories – Lived Experiences
‘Living It’

Waterstones
Buy & Name A Star

Why Don’t We Have Conjugal Visits In The UK

There are several reasons why conjugal visits are not allowed:

Security and Control: One of the primary concerns is maintaining security and control within prisons. Allowing intimate visits between inmates and their partners or spouses raises potential risks, such as contraband smuggling, escape attempts, or disruptions to the overall prison environment. Prisons prioritise safety and security, and conjugal visits may be seen as compromising these objectives.
Limited Resources: Implementing conjugal visits would require significant resources, including additional staffing, infrastructure, and administrative processes. The prison system faces challenges related to overcrowding and limited resources, and prioritising resources for other essential areas such as rehabilitation programs and maintaining basic prison operations may take precedence over providing conjugal visits.
Focus on Rehabilitation: The prison system emphasises the rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders. While maintaining family relationships is recognized as important for an individual’s well-being and successful reintegration, alternative measures are in place to support family ties, such as regular visits, correspondence, and family support programs. These measures aim to maintain connections while ensuring security and control within the prison environment.

Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic literature review

Affiliations.

1 Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences, School of Medicine, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
2 School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK.
PMID: 34597428
DOI: 10.1002/cbm.2215

Background: Imprisonment impacts on lives beyond the prisoner's. In particular, family and intimate relationships are affected. Only some countries permit private conjugal visits in prison between a prisoner and community living partner.

Aims: Our aim was to find evidence from published international literature on the safety, benefits or harms of such visits.

Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted using broad search terms, including words like 'private' and 'family', to maximise search sensitivity but strict criteria for inclusion - of visits unobserved by prison staff and away from other prisoners. All included papers were quality assessed. Two of us independently extracted data from included papers, according to a prepared checklist. Meta-analysis was considered.

Results: Seventeen papers were identified from 12 independent studies, all but three of them from North America. The only study of health benefits found a positive association with maintaining sexual relationships. The three before-and-after study of partnership qualities suggested benefit, but conjugal visiting was within a wider family-support programme. Studies with in-prison behaviour as a possible outcome suggest small, if any, association, although one US-wide study found significantly fewer in-prison sexual assaults in states allowing conjugal visiting than those not. Other studies were of prisoner, staff or partner attitudes. There is little evidence of adverse effects, although two qualitative studies raise concerns about the visiting partner's sense of institutionalisation or coercion.

Conclusions: The balance of evidence about conjugal visiting is positive, but there is little of it. As stable family relationships have, elsewhere, been associated with desistance from crime, the contribution of conjugal visiting to these should be better researched.

Keywords: conjugal visit; consensual sex in prisons; imprisonment; prisoners; private visiting.

Publication types

Systematic Review
Interpersonal Relations
Risk Assessment
Sexual Partners

Controversy and Conjugal Visits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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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How Do Conjugal Visits Work?

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

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

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

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

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

What Is a Conjugal Visit?

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

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

History of Conjugal Visits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Is the Increasing Cancellation Justifiable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conjugal Visit State-by-State Rules

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conjugal Visits: A Typical Experience

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Better Understanding Conjugal Visits

Conjugal visits are designed to keep family ties.

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

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

Don’t Expect So Much Comf ort

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

Inmates Are Strip-Searched

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

Inmates Do Not Have All-time Privacy

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

Conjugal Visits FAQ

Are conjugal visits allowed in the federal prison system?

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

What are the eligibility criteria?

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

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

Are gay partners allowed for conjugal visits?

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

Are conjugal visits only done in the US?

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

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

Benefits of Conjugal Visits

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Petition Conjugal Visits Allowed In The UK To Stop Reoffending.

In the summer of 2014, The Howard League released a report entitled Sex in Prison. It explored the possibility of conjugal visits – which are not permitted in the UK but operate successfully in much of Europe, Canada and even the Middle East. Dr Atkinson was one of the researchers behind the paper.

The Howard League released a report where it explored the possibility of conjugal visits – which are not permitted in the UK but operate successfully in much of Europe. Lorraine Atkinson was one of the researchers behind the paper who visited Halden prison in Norway in 2014, where conjugal visits are allowed. As a result, Norway has one of the lowest reoffending rates in the world, currently standing at 20%. In comparison, 59% of British prisoners reoffend within a year of being released.

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Date closed 14 May 2018

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Conjugal Visit (2022)
Conjugal Visit (2022)
So What are the Actual Rules with Conjugal Visits?
What are the things you can take into prison?
Women inmates get conjugal visit on Christmas Eve

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Are conjugal visits allowed in the UK? Prison rules explained
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 their legal spouse. The generally ...
Conjugal visit
A conjugal visit is a scheduled period in which an inmate of a prison or jail is permitted to spend several hours or days in private with a visitor. The visitor is usually their legal spouse. The generally recognized basis for permitting such visits in modern times is to preserve family bonds and increase the chances of success for a prisoner's eventual return to ordinary life after release ...
Staying in touch with someone in prison
A convicted prisoner is usually allowed at least two 1-hour visits every 4 weeks. A prisoner on remand (waiting for their trial) is allowed three 1-hour visits a week. You can find out more about ...
Conjugal visits
Conjugal visits. 'Facilities must be provided to enable UK prisoners to enjoy conjugal visits', a landmark European court ruling concluded in February. By forbidding 'sexual relations' between prisoners and their visitors, the court decided that the British government was in breach of Article 8 of the Human Rights Act: the right to ...
Examining the Duration and Rules for Prison Visits in the UK
2-3 - General population inmates are allowed 2-3 visits per month from their approved list. 1 - Higher risk category inmates may only receive 1 visit per month to discourage gang/criminal activity. 4 - Benchmark of good behavior can qualify prisoners for up to 4 visit sessions per month. So for inmates exhibiting compliance and progress ...
Prison visits
The type of visit may take different forms, including: face-to-face meetings in prison; spending time in private, including conjugal visits; brief, temporary release; This narrative is based on one meta-analytic review of 16 studies. The crime outcome measured was reoffending.
Conjugal Visits UK Prisons
In the summer of 2014, The Howard League released a report entitled Sex in Prison. It explored the possibility of conjugal visits - which are not permitted in the UK but operate successfully in ...
Conjugal Rights for Prisoners: To Be Or Not To Be?
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. ... In 2010, the Ministry of ...
Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic
The three before-and-after study of partnership qualities suggested benefit, but conjugal visiting was within a wider family-support programme. Studies with in-prison behaviour as a possible outcome suggest small, if any, association, although one US-wide study found significantly fewer in-prison sexual assaults in states allowing conjugal ...
Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic
This controlled study involved 124 women, aged 18 to 40 years, who engaged in sexual relations with their inmate partners (conjugal visit group [CVG]) or with their partners at home (control group ...
So What are the Actual Rules with Conjugal Visits and How Did They Get
In fact, in New York, it's reported that around 40% of conjugal visits don't include a spouse or the like, rather often just children and other loved ones. For this reason, these visits are usually officially called things like "Extended Family Visits" or, in New York, the "Family Reunion Program". As one California inmate summed up ...
Why Don't We Have Conjugal Visits In The UK
A Why Don't We Have Conjugal Visits In The UK There are several reasons why conjugal visits are not allowed: Security and Control: One of the primary concerns is maintaining security and control within prisons. Allowing intimate visits between inmates and their partners or spouses raises potential risks, such as contraband smuggling, escape attempts, or disruptions […]
Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic
Only some countries permit private conjugal visits in prison between a prisoner and community living partner. Aims: Our aim was to find evidence from published international literature on the safety, benefits or harms of such visits. Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted using broad search terms, including words like 'private ...
Introduce Conjugal Visits in prisons throughout the UK and Northern
Rejected petition Introduce Conjugal Visits in prisons throughout the UK and Northern Ireland. Introduce Conjugal Visits in prisons throughout the UK and Northern Ireland. Approximately 80,000 people in the UK have a partner incarcerated in a British jail. With a limited number of visits per month, typically lasting for a maximum of 1 hour each ...
Controversy and Conjugal Visits
"The words 'conjugal visit' seem to have a dirty ring to them for a lot of people," a man named John Stefanisko wrote for The Bridge, a quarterly at the Connecticut Correctional Institution at Somers, in December 1963.This observation marked the beginning of a long campaign—far longer, perhaps, than the men at Somers could have anticipated—for conjugal visits in the state of ...
Conjugal visits in the UK
Conjugal visits in the UK. Approximately 80,000 people in the UK have a partner incarcerated in a British jail. With a limited number of visits per month, typically lasting for a maximum of 1 hour each, prison can have an almost instantaneously damaging effect on a marriage or relationship.
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Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK 2 School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK Correspondence Pamela J. Taylor, Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical ... from its inception year (1983), limiting the search to only "conjugal visit". All 619 titles generated were checked. All references were downloaded to EndNote ...
Benefits and risks of conjugal visits in prison: A systematic
The three before-and-after study of partnership qualities suggested benefit, but conjugal visiting was within a wider family-support programme. Studies with in-prison behaviour as a possible outcome suggest small, if any, association, although one US-wide study found significantly fewer in-prison sexual assaults in states allowing conjugal ...
How Do Conjugal Visits Work?
A conjugal visit is a popular practice that allows inmates to spend time alone with their loved one (s), particularly a significant other, while incarcerated. By implication, and candidly, conjugal visits afford prisoners an opportunity to, among other things, engage their significant other sexually. However, in actual content, such visits go ...
Redditors with spouses in prison, what are conjugal visits actually
Reply reply. kk141. •. Conjugal visits are an actually used thing and their use is growing. They don't usually happen in the prison and you're obviously not going to see it happen at all in anything above medium security facilities. But low-sec facilities will allow it for some inmates depending on behavior.
The Process and Regulations for Conducting Conjugal Visits in ...
The very first conjugal visit (at least the first documented) was in Mississippi in 1918. These visits were initially designed to help maintain family ties. They also helped reduce sexual tensions in prison. After Mississippi started a program, other states followed. By the 1960s, conjugal visits were pretty common in state prisons across the US.
Conjugal Visits Allowed In The UK To Stop Reoffending
In the summer of 2014, The Howard League released a report entitled Sex in Prison. It explored the possibility of conjugal visits - which are not permitted in the UK but operate successfully in much of Europe, Canada and even the Middle East. Dr Atkinson was one of the researchers behind the paper.
States That Allow Conjugal Visits
In 1993, 17 states had conjugal visitation programs. By the 2000s, that number was down to six, with only California, Connecticut, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, and Washington allowing such visits. And by 2015, Mississippi and New Mexico eliminated their programs. For the most part, states no longer refer to "conjugal" visits.