The Dark Origins And Troubling Future Of Conjugal Visits In American Prisons

Published September 15, 2016
Updated November 9, 2023

Despite growing global acceptance and evidence that they reduce crime, conjugal visits are disappearing in the U.S. — here’s why.

Bed Frame

Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images

In pop culture and the public imagination, “conjugal visits” are a trope that tends toward either the lurid or the comic, conjuring up images of sex with prisoners and providing fodder for both porn and sitcoms.

In reality, conjugal visits — which are now often known as “extended family visits” — exist around the world so that prisoners and their families can maintain healthy connections with one another. They are not primarily about satisfying the prisoner’s sexual needs.

Thus, many of the world’s high functioning judicial systems have liberal rules about conjugal visitation. Yet the trend in the U.S. is heading in the other direction, despite evidence of the practice’s benefits.

Conjugal Visits Around The World

Conjugal Visits France

FRANK PERRY/AFP/Getty ImagesA picture taken on May 10, 2012 in the Nantes new penitentiary, western France, shows the unit dedicated for prisoners when they receive a visit of their families.

Attitudes toward “conjugal visits,” which are in fact generally known as “family reunion visits,” vary widely across the world.

In September of 2013, Qatar’s Central Prison announced the opening of villas in which spouses and children could visit inmates — a feature it shares with Turkish prisons. The same year, Israel moved to allow conjugal visits for homosexual inmates as well as married and common-law partners.

Saudi Arabia, not exactly a bastion of human rights, and Iran (not much of an exemplar, either) have long allowed conjugal visits for married prisoners.

Honduras

ORLANDO SIERRA/AFP/GettyImagesInmates receive the visit of relatives in Honduras’ National Prison of Comayagua.

In Canada, every two months inmates are allowed to spend up to 72 hours in a flat with their spouses; common law partners of at least six months prior to incarceration; as well as children, parents, foster-parents, siblings, grandparents, or in-laws.

“We get to cook together, play cards and bingo, and be a family…The children get to know their father,” a female relative of a prisoner in Ontario told the Economist.

author
John Kuroski
author
John Kuroski is the editorial director of All That's Interesting. He graduated from New York University with a degree in history, earning a place in the Phi Alpha Theta honor society for history students. An editor at All That's Interesting since 2015, his areas of interest include modern history and true crime.
editor
Savannah Cox
editor
Savannah Cox holds a Master's in International Affairs from The New School as well as a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and now serves as an Assistant Professor at the University of Sheffield. Her work as a writer has also appeared on DNAinfo.