Life for prison inmates in Mississippi hasn’t exactly been easy — one book about the state’s correctional system has the title “Worse Than Slavery.” But for nearly 100 years, they have enjoyed conjugal visits. In 1918, Mississippi became the first state in the nation to allow conjugal visits in the belief they would increase the productivity of black inmate workers by giving them an outlet for sexual aggression.
But conjugal visits may soon be as much a relic of Mississippi’s penal past as chain gangs. Last month, the state announced they would no longer be allowed effective Feb. 1, citing costs and concerns over female visitors becoming the single parents of children conceived in prison.
Of the more than 22,000 inmates, only 155 inmates had conjugal visits, which are limited to one hour, in the last fiscal year. Extended family visits lasting up to 24 hours, in which children had to be included, were ended last year.
“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,” Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Christopher B. Epps said. “The benefits of the programs don’t outweigh the cost in the overall budget.”
Mississippi is one of only five states that still has conjugal visit programs.
“It’s just like putting a kid in timeout,” State Rep. Richard Bennett, who tried to outlaw the visits in 2012, told the New York Times. “Do you give them their favorite things?”
But a new group called Mississippi Advocates for Prisoners is trying to get Epps to reconsider. Conjugal visits “are the one privilege that allows the men to help keep the family together — to act as a man and a husband,” the group’s leader, Jennifer Rogers, said.
According to a recent Yale Law School survey of prison systems in all 50 states, allowing conjugal visits may, in addition to encouraging good behavior, “decrease sexual violence within prisons” and help strengthen families.
James Parchman, the warden at Mississippi State Penitentiary, didn’t have the benefits of such research when he made the decision to allow conjugal visits in 1918. According to “Worse Than Slavery” author David Oshinsky, prison officials at the time thought blacks had stronger sexual urges than whites and allowing black inmates to have sex occasionally would make them work harder on prison farms.
In the 1970s, new prisons were often constructed with special housing units for extended family visits. But by 1993, the number of states allowing visits had shrunk to 17.
In announcing Mississippi’s about-face, Epps cited the “costs associated with the staff’s time, having to escort inmates to and from the visitation facility, supervising personal hygiene and keeping up the infrastructure of the facility.” But the state hasn’t offered any figures on the number of babies born or the costs of the conjugal visit program.
“Is it really the money, or is it that the program’s become a political target for Mississippi politicians who find the policy uncomfortably liberal?” asked New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist Jarvis DeBerry.