![]() ![]() “The benefits of the programs don’t outweigh the cost in the overall budget.”įamily members who participated in the visits strongly disagreed. ![]() ![]() “While both the extended family visitation and conjugal visit program involve a small percentage of inmates, the cost coupled with big-ticket items adds up,” Epps stated. Under the program, the visits were available only to prisoners classified as minimum- or medium-security who did not have a written rules violation within the previous six months. Of the more than 22,000 prisoners in Mississippi state prisons, just 155 were allowed conjugal visits in fiscal year 2013. “Then, even though we provide contraception, we have no idea how many women are getting pregnant only for the child to be raised by one parent.” “There are costs associated with the staff’s time, having to escort inmates to and from the visitation facility, supervising personal hygiene and keeping up with the infrastructure of the facility,” Mississippi DOC Commissioner Christopher B. On February 1, 2014, Mississippi joined the 45 states that prohibit conjugal visits, halting the century-old practice due to what officials called budget issues and concerns about babies being born as a possible result of the visits. Nevertheless, the authors of the study maintained that their findings have “other policy implications.” Treatment programs, they argued, “should be geared to view sexual offending as a sex crime instead of solely as a crime of power.” Such programs, the study said, could reduce recidivism among sex offenders. The researchers acknowledged their study had certain limitations, particularly that rape and sexual assault among prisoners are underreported and, as a result, there could have been more incidents of sexual victimization in states that allow conjugal visits than reflected in their data. “Additionally,” the study continued, “because conjugal visitation is reported to reduce homosexual activity and because AIDS is often spread by homosexual activity, conjugal visitation may help to attenuate the spread of AIDS in prison.” For example, conjugal visits, also known as family visits, help “improve the functioning of a marriage by maintaining an inmate’s role as husband or wife, improve the inmate’s behavior while incarcerated, counter the effects of prisonization, and improve post-release success by enhancing the inmate’s ability to maintain ties with his or her family.” The FIU researchers said the effect of conjugal visitation in reducing sexual assaults among prisoners should encourage more states to consider allowing such visits, which the study noted have other positive effects. While sexual violence occurred in state prison systems that prohibit conjugal visits at an average rate of 226 incidents per 100,000 prisoners, it occurred almost four times less frequently in the five states that permitted such visits – 57 per 100,000 prisoners. “Inmate-on-inmate sexual offending is much less pronounced in states that allow conjugal visitation,” the study concluded. The FIU study was conducted over a three-year period, from 2004-2006, in the five states that provided conjugal visits at that time: California, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York and Washington. In spite of the report’s findings, two states recently announced that they are discontinuing their conjugal visitation programs. “Our findings propel the idea that sexual violence can be attenuated given appropriate policy initiatives,” stated the authors of the 2012 study, Stewart D’Alessio, Jamie Flexon and Lisa Stolzenberg. Research Finds that Conjugal Visits Correlate with Fewer Sexual AssaultsĪ study conducted by researchers at Florida International University (FIU) found that state prison systems that permit conjugal visits report fewer rapes and sexual assaults than those where such visits are prohibited – a finding that the researchers said tends to dispute the theory that sex offenses are crimes of power rather than a means of sexual gratification. Share: Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on G+ Share with email ![]()
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