Conjugal Visits in American Prisons: An Overview

Conjugal visits are basically visits in which a prisoners spouse is allowed to see the prisoner mainly to engage in sexual relationships. In the United States there are only six states that allow conjugal visits. The states are California, Mississippi, Connecticut, New Mexico, New York and Washington. Mississippi and New Mexico have just recently ended their conjugal visits programs due to high costs and low benefit results. In order to be eligible to participate in conjugal visit programs inmates need to be housed within a medium security prison or lower. The rules for conjugal visitation might be different from state to state, but in general the inmates who apply must be legally married. Inmates who do qualify must have impeccable conduct

The benefits of conjugal visits are outweighed by the disadvantages and the overall cost of the program.

Many of the results that show conjugal visits reduce sexual assault in prisons are insignificant. The number of inmates in prison is huge, yet only a minimal number of inmates are eligible to participate in conjugal visits. Rachel Wyatt mentions that 46% of inmates report being married at some point, but only half of those inmates remained legally married (pg.21, 2006). Results from these research studies and surveys cannot be generalized to the entire prison population. There exists a large disparity between the number of prison inmates who cannot participate in conjugal visit and the ones who can. Therefore, it is preposterous to assume that conjugal visits will deter sexual assaults within prisons. Several research studies have found that sexual assault in prisons is a result of power, control, and humiliation. Feminist theory argues that “the sexual aspect of a rape or other sexual offense is not motivationally relevant because a sexual offense is viewed as ‘sexual