![]() Conjugal visits are "really a program to prevent recidivism," Jorja Leap, a social welfare professor at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs told Time in 2014. "Indeed, more generally, the positive impact of visitation on visiting family and on inmates has been well documented," they wrote.Ĭonjugal visits could reduce the rate of reoffending prisoners, saving states money in the long-term, according to some experts. ![]() "Family members and children who visit and are thus able to build and sustain more meaningful relationships with their incarcerated parent or family member may benefit tremendously," researchers noted. That study also pointed to the familial benefits conjugal visits could bring, "improv 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." Researchers also noted the possibility of reducing sexually transmitted diseases by reducing inmate-to-inmate contact.Īnother 2012 national study by Yale law students found that conjugal visits could not only decrease sexual violence between prisoners, but also act as "a powerful incentive" for good behavior for inmates who want to spend time with loved ones. One 2012 study found that in states where conjugal visits are not allowed, prisons had more than four times as many incidents of sexual violence between inmates as facilities in states where they were allowed. Research supporting conjugal visits indicates that allowing inmates to spend time with partners and loved ones strengthens family bonds, reduces violence, and creates safer prison environments for inmates. According to the Marshall Project, 17 states allowed visits 20 years ago, but that number has shrunk over the years as lawmakers and voters have shied away from funding programs they say are expensive, too good for offenders, and damaging to health and wellness. But research indicates that visits are a potential boon to prison environments and an incentive for inmates to be on good behavior in order to be eligible. Moreover, states could potentially save money in long-term incarceration costs. Just four states-California, Connecticut, New York, and Washington-provide conjugal benefits. We also present myriad examples of how prisoners and their allies are fighting back to create more livable conditions in these facilities and to ultimately abolish the prison industrial complex as we know it.Once a common facet of prison life, conjugal visits-intimate time for prisoners to spend with significant others or family-are now a luxury afforded to few inmates serving time in the U.S. We offer historical data and narratives to provide context and a deeper understanding of how we got into this mess. In this Annual Report, the UCSB Prison Environmental Justice Project provides data, stories, and analysis of these challenges in great detail. In those cases, while the people are not being extracted, their labor and ecological resources usually are, and they face additional environmental and public health threats associated with colonization. In some instances, we find that entire communities are living in “open air prisons” wherein their daily lives, freedoms, and mobility are restricted and controlled by occupying governments. What we document in this report are the many ways that environmental injustices also reflect what we call the incarceration-extraction nexus-those intersections between the act of extracting people out of our communities and caging them in prisons and jails where they are subjected to a range of abuses, and the act of extracting wealth from and poisoning our ecosystems. ![]() Specifically, the evidence of water contamination, air pollution exposure, poor nutrition and woefully inadequate medical care, torture and neglect in carceral facilities around the world is widespread and overwhelming. These abuses intersect with and reinforce a myriad of environmental injustices. Prisons and jails around the globe are sites of heart-wrenching, stomach-turning violence and brutality, perpetrated by the governments and corporations that build and manage them.
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