Rehabilitation is necessary for public safety, yet some states’ prison systems are leaning more and more toward hampering the best rehabilitation tool: family and contact visiting, two studies say.
“Revising prison visitation policies to make them more ‘visitor friendly’ could yield public safety benefits by helping offenders establish a continuum of social support from prison to the community,” suggests one study.
The Minnesota study by Grant Duwe and Valerie Clark is called Blessed Be the Social Tie That Binds: The Effects of Prison Visitation on Offender Recidivism, published in the Criminal Justice Policy Review 2013. Another report was by Kristina Hall, titled Visiting a Prisoner Can Help Reduce Crimes after Release.
California Gov. Jerry Brown has ordered the state’s prisons to conduct more thorough searches of people who enter prisons.
Those who don’t clear a metal detector may be subject to additional screening, which could include “a hand-held wand inspection in conjunction with a clothed body search of the visitor’s body; a clothed-body search alone; or an unclothed (skin) body search.” (Notice of Change of Regulations #12-07 to Section(s): 3173.2 and 3174 10/5/2012)
Family (conjugal) visits have been cut from Mississippi and New Mexico in 2014, leaving California, New York and Washington the only remaining states that allow them. Prison Legal News of May 2014 reported Research Finds That Conjugal Visits Correlate with Fewer Sexual Assaults.
However, in California, family visits are not permitted for:
inmates with death sentences
inmates sentenced to life without parole
inmates sentenced to life without a parole date established by the Board of Parole Hearings
inmates convicted of a violent offense involving a minor or a family member
sex offenders
inmates in reception centers
inmates in administrative segregation units
inmates guilty of narcotics infractions while incarcerated
“You lock a man in a cage to punish him, then further punish him by hampering visits,” said John “YaYah” Johnson. “It makes him socially dysfunctional.”
The difference between family (conjugal) visiting and regular visiting are huge.
“On a family visit, you are actually taken out of prison while in prison, put in a two-bedroom home with TV, bath, kitchen. You are able to cater to your wife’s needs, child’s needs. Inside family visits, there are no lockdowns, you are home in a sense,” said Antwan Williams, an inmate.
Williams has family visits with his wife and daughter. He is serving 15 years for kidnap/robbery. (He moved somebody a few feet during a holdup.)
Conjugal 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,” found researchers at Florida International University (FIU) according to an article published in the Prison Legal News. That study was conducted from 2004 to 2006 in the five states that allowed conjugal visits then.
“If I could have family visits, I would be able to be more of a father to my son and husband to my wife,” commented Lemar Harrison. “It would be an incentive to be an upstanding prisoner. It would make my ties with my wife and son that much stronger. It would help us do this time.”
Harrison is a married lifer with a son. He has been convicted of murder/robbery and sentenced to 25 years to life. He receives regular visits weekly.
Several lifer inmates who aren’t married or eligible for family visits see them as a benefit well beyond their potential for conjugal contact.
“Family visits aren’t all about sex,” said Demond Lewis. “Family visits would give us a chance to bond and be a part of the family. It would give you a couple of days to talk to your little brother. He’s going to see he can leave, and we can’t. A lot of dudes just want to be a productive part of their family. They say you, you, you, but they don’t look at how they create bitter feelings toward the department and system because you have taken my family visits away.”
Lewis is serving 109 years for shooting a man in the leg as a third strike. He has three kids but isn’t eligible for family visit as a lifer.
“I would love to be able to sit down and see my 88-year-old grandma,” added Eric Curtis, a three-striker.
Recent studies also show the huge difference family visits can have on child development.
“Significant health problems and behavioral issues were associated with the children of incarcerated parents, and that parental incarceration may be more harmful to children’s health than divorce or death of a parent,” says a study presented at the 109th annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, according to Hoaip Tran Bui’s article in USA Today on Aug. 25, 2014.
“It makes a huge difference on child’s development,” agrees Williams. “My presence isn’t just on the phone. You can’t understand sleep apnea or nightmares through Global Tel Link. …to have that taken away says the needs of the child do not matter … it would stunt her growth.”
Duwe and Clark wrote, “Visits from family and friends offer a means for establishing, maintaining, or enhancing social support networks. Strengthening social bonds for incarcerated offenders may be important, not only because it can help prevent them from assuming a criminal identity, but also because many released prisoners rely on family and friends for employment opportunities, financial assistance, and housing.”
