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It's no secret that in Washington, D.C., corruption is everywhere, and I should know my mom's the speaker of the House. My friends are all in the same boat, daughters of the D.C. elite. When are this close to power? There's nowhere to hide.

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Welcome to stuff you should know. A production of Bayport radios HowStuffWorks. Hey, and welcome to the podcast, I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles to be Chuck Bright and there's Jerry over there. And this is stuff you should know in other prison, Ed.. We're starting to fill it out a little bit. You don't remember even talking about this in our prison episode, did we? There's just no way we didn't mention it somehow. We certainly didn't go into depth.

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I remember wanting to do this for a while and looking into it before and being like, oh, it's not really a thing. Luckily, you put Julia Layton on it and she did a little more digging and it turned out it was a kind of a human rights criminology thing.

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Yeah, but you're sort of right that it's not really much of a thing, which is sad.

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I've learned. I think so, I think. Yeah, I think we'll get to it, but yes, I'm in favor of, um, extended family visits, which may or may not include tax year.

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Yeah, I got that from, uh, now, uh, Hobgoblins, the Mystery Science Theater, 3000 version of hobgoblins.

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OK, it's it's pretty great. Just just go check it out, you know, show up eventually. Yeah.

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Well, I mean, you mentioned sexy time. And I think when you think of conjugal visits.

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That's the. I mean, that's originally what it was and we'll get to the history, but that's the first thing you probably think of is a time set aside at a certain place at a prison, probably not, you know, a separate building at a prison where you generally think of like a wife going to have sex with her inmate husband.

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Yeah.

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And in fact, I mean, that's actually a pretty good term for it, because in biology, to conjugate means to become temporarily united in order to exchange genetic material. Man, if that's not a clinical term, I never heard it before. Yeah. Right there with mouthparts.

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I mean, yeah, it does. Everybody's heard of conjugal visits. I mean, like it's just kind of like this legendary mythological thing. Like if you've ever seen a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the 40s, you know, about conjugal visits, you know what I mean?

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Really. But you could see it, though, couldn't you?

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Wouldn't that be like one of those random things where as an adult, you went back, you're like, I can't believe this is part of this cartoon.

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I think I would be surprised if Bugs Bunny featured prison or sex. So, yeah, I'd be pretty surprised. All right. I guarantee prison's made an appearance. All right. But the thing is, is there does seem to be like a huge misunderstanding about conjugal visits or an understanding about them, but then a complete lack of understanding about how much further these visits go. And actually, I think that that kind of has led to their decline because you need public support to keep something like that up, because it's real easy to get rid of.

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If you are are so minded, it's very easy to get rid of.

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And as you'll see or you know, or here that's been happening over the course of the past 20 years in a big way. And a big reason is because what you mentioned earlier, what we're really talking about these days in the United States, and we'll get to other countries, other countries are like bring it do it six ways to Sunday a month.

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But now, like, we really have to watch, um, they're called extended family visits in New York. They're called family reunion visits. And it's really easy for a politician of a certain kind of politician that doesn't want this kind of thing going on to just lump it in there. As you know, your taxpayer dollars are going toward these hardcore criminals, just being able to have sex and like, why would we support that? Right.

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Not the case. They can say, watch this, I'm fiscally conservative and tough on criminals. And then the people say, how much did you save? And they go, hmm, yeah.

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Well, we'll get to that. Do so. Well, let's talk about how well, we'll explain how much beyond what the public's understanding of conjugal visits are that it goes. But let's talk about the origins of these things. You want to.

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Yeah, the the basically racist origins in Mississippi, Mississippi state pen. In the early 1980s, there was a for profit labor camp called Parchment Farm where the warden basically said, you know what, everybody knows that, that black men have an insatiable sex drive. And that's one reason they're in here to begin with. So if we get these guys having a little bit of sex as an incentive, then they're going to work harder for us and increase our profits.

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That that's the origin of conjugal visits, period.

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Really, that's it. And so this warden started this program at parchment, which became, I believe, the Mississippi State Penitentiary. And this was in 1918.

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Yeah. 1918 is when he started bringing in sex workers. Right.

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And you just hit the nail on the head, as it were, on Sundays and on Sundays, the warden would bring in sex workers for to lay with the inmates. And do more than just Lane. Yeah, like married. Not a problem single, not a problem. We got the shake out in the back. And, you know, I don't know if you want to be like tenth on that list for the day, but that's that's how we're going to do things around here.

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Yeah. And like you were right about the racist origins of it, because it wasn't until 12 years after that program was instituted that it was extended to white inmates. And then it wasn't another, I think, 54 years before it was finally extended to female to women and female inmates. Yeah. And along the way, what's crazy is between that that Gulf of Time, 1918 and 1972, when women were first became eligible in Mississippi for conjugal visits, it underwent this kind of like a surprising enlightenment transition to where there was a nineteen sixty six maybe study that was done on in the notes on the study, like some criminologists or corrections official basically said, you know, this is possibly one of the most enlightened programs in the entire corrections field in the entire country, Mississippi.

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What grew out of their racist conjugal visit program became something like genuinely enlightened, which is pretty interesting. Yeah, and we should note that in 1963 is when they they were not bringing in sex workers. At that point, you had to be married and it had to be your spouse. And that's an important distinction. But for, you know, forty five years, it seems like they were bringing in every Sunday sex workers to to, I guess, labor.

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Yeah. To to incentivize these guys. Yeah, right. Right.

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And so I think that's where the transition came, where it became enlightened as it went from an incentive to get them to work harder because parchment was a for profit prison labor camp, which, by the way, if you're if you're like, what does that go watch? Thirteen thirteenth, the Ava DuVernay documentary, the 13th Amendment, one of the most mind altering documentaries you will ever see. Really, really well done, but really kind of drives home the idea of prison labor is an extension of slavery.

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But that was what this was. This is Jim Crow. Slavery was legal slavery after slavery was abolished. And so the whole thing was to get these inmates to work harder. But then over time, they said, well, no, wait a minute, maybe this is actually good for society. Weirdly, it's going to keep these family ties between the inmates and the people they've been separated from, you know, just linked enough that when they go back out on the outside, they're not just going to go back to a life of crime.

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They're still going to have these relationships that they had before they went in.

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Yeah. And so, you know, as as everyone knows, as things go in Mississippi, they generally follow in the rest of the United States and extended visitation is what they were calling it. Well, I guess they call it conjugal visits, but in the 60s is when it started to spread to more and more states around the United States. I think California and South Carolina had programs in the late 60s. New York and Minnesota jumped on board in the 70s.

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I think in the 80s, some other states, New Mexico and Wyoming, got on board. And then I guess we would call it the golden age of conjugal visits. In the early 90s, there were 17 states that allowed some sort of extended visitation.

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Yeboah So that was the peak in one of the reasons the early 90s were the peak was because of about the early 80s. The United States said, you know what, this whole, like, rehabilitation thing that's kicked off in the 50s, this idea that prison was meant to rehabilitate people and turn them into better services, it didn't work. And we think it's all a bunch of hooey and we're going to abandon that and get tough on crime. And that's what happened.

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I mean, throughout the 80s and the 90s, we got super tough on crime, super conservative about how we treat criminals and prisoners. And the idea became, if you were in prison, you're in there for a reason and you you should not have any kind of frills or moments of joy. You're supposed to be in there to be punished, maybe to reflect on what you did wrong. But it really ultimately this is punishment and we're not going to treat you like a human being any longer.

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You're a prisoner. It's a different kind of person.

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And part of that is taking away conjugal visits right in that line of thinking, like you said, was a pretty big sea change. And and now we don't have crime. Right? It worked. Newt Gingrich's plan worked.

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Should we take. Oh, boy, I think we should take a break on Newt Gingrich, right? Sure. Let's all take a break on Newt Gingrich. Let's take a little break and we'll be back right after this.

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Twenty years, nine Super Bowl appearances, six Super Bowl championships, the New England Patriots of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are the greatest dynasty in NFL history. I'm Gary Myers, NFL sports journalist for over 40 years. Join me for a new podcast, The Goat, Tom Brady.

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I pull back the curtain on the greatest run of sustained success by one player and one team in NFL history with never before heard interviews with Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells, Robert Kraft, Tom Brady, senior coaches, friends, family, and, of course, the greatest of all time, Tom Brady.

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All right, Chuck, so. Let's talk a little bit about what these things evolved to along the way, because if you're just sitting there like, OK, so prisoners can't have sex anymore, that's really not the end of the world to me. Well, prepare for your heart to bleed a little more than it is right now, because over time, these conjugal visits developed into order, like you said, called extended family visits or family reunion visits.

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And they involved not just spouses, but also kids. The parents of the inmate might come to visit, siblings might come to visit, and there is no sex involved. It was family time like that was the point of the whole thing, was to spend time with family. And if you read some of the accounts of of the children, of inmates who have memories of going to these extended family visits they form, these are like the memories of their lifetime, like these are some of their best childhood memories, ironically enough.

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Yeah. And, you know, the whole purpose here is primarily twofold, which is incentive. It's still an incentive to get inmates to follow the rules, because as you'll see, as we detail this stuff, you really, really have to follow the rules.

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Like very few prisoners are even eligible for this kind of thing. Right. And then the other thing is, you know, just to foster that family tie.

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So once you get out, you don't have that that cliche you see in the movie where you come home from prison and you have these strangers sitting in your house that are your children. Right. And there's at least some small modicum of of a relationship of some sort of a tie, emotional tie with a parent and a child or like you said, the parent of the inmate or, you know, spouses, they're still involved, obviously. So when they get out, the idea is that they have a support system, they're waiting on them and not like, well, now I have this super awkward moment where I have to come in and get to know my teenage children.

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Right. Or, you know, like this is really hard on me. I think I'm going to go back to crime or go back to addiction or whatever. So the idea that there's this structure that remains in place and solid during their imprisonment, that the the thought is that that just helps them ease into normal society afterward.

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Yeah, well, we really need to drive that home because I think the way I said it, there might be people saying, well, so what if it's super awkward? You shouldn't have committed the crime. It's not that it can be so awkward and off-putting that it can it can cause someone, like you said, to not go home and to not want to face their family that they don't know. And all of a sudden there they are alone out there.

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And as we'll see, we have statistics to back it up. Recidivism is is a big problem in this really, really helps. It's also a bonehead word. It is a bonehead word. The thing is, too, is also it's not necessarily even just awkward for them, but there's there's expectations that are on them. When they come back home. They have people that they're accountable to. Right. Which helps that transition because, you know, and you can imagine that the transition that period immediately after prison life into normal society, I'm not sure if it's weeks or months, maybe longer.

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That is the most difficult part of getting back into society. And so to have a family and a home to go to, that that just changes things. They make movies about it. They do. And Bugs Bunny cartoons.

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So here's and we'll get to some of these stories, too, in a second. But here's how it works, depending on where you are, because it's different at every prison and every state has their own. And I think we should also point out that it's only state prisons where it's even allowed at all. Like if you're in federal prison, there isn't anything like this from what I could find.

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Yeah, but they try to set it up.

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I mean, it depends on whether there's a like a shack in the back or a trailer.

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Sometimes I think they try to make them a little homier these days. And what they're looking to do is sort of recreate some sense of normalcy over the one to four days that you're allowed to be with your family. This one in Connecticut, McDougle Walker Correctional Institution. I think it's the biggest prison in the New England area. They have a full on like two bedroom apartment with a kitchen and they can bring in food and cook meals together and watch movies.

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I think they they have like stock DVDs and stuff like that. But I think you are allowed to even bring in everything is heavily inspected, of course, but you are allowed to bring in food to cook like your favorite family meal. They're not just like, well, here's what you got from the prison pantry.

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Yeah, that's what I saw as well. And I think more than just I think that's partly an economical decision to. Sure. Because they also charge there's. It can be a nominal fee, like in, I think New York maybe, or Washington, I think Washington, it's like ten dollars a visit or something like that. But, you know, every penny counts in some of the the budget deficit prisons in the United States. So they do kind of count those pennies.

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But more more to the point, the point of bringing in outside food is to create that sense of normalcy for the family.

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It's basically like a staycation on prison grounds is what I would like ideally is what I got from from the research I did. Yeah.

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And if the prisoner's favorite dessert is a fingernail file cake, that's what they're getting.

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That can't be helped. Talk about a movie drop. Has that ever happened in the history of the world?

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I don't know. We got to find out now, though. You just threw down the gauntlet like a fingernail file being snuck in a cake and that leading to an escape.

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I think it's I think it's probably never happened. We'll find out.

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That reminds me, though, I've been wanting to do an episode on the Three Stooges. That may be a two parter.

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OK, that's a prepare for no women to listen. It's so great. There's so good, man. Yeah, it's kind of a dudes thing, though. Maybe we'll change that with our episodes. There should have been a counterpart. Yeah.

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You know, I wonder if there was I'm sure they tried that out at some point during the middle.

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Well, I think the idea of a show with three women that are morons that just kind of abuse each other physically was probably not very realistic or believable, not like the real stooges and how realistic that was. Right.

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Man, seriously, I watch it sometimes still today. And it's classic. Yes, it really is. And for a good reason. It's it's hilarious, but also just so well choreographed.

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And those dudes worked hard then I think we should totally do a an episode on that lot.

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OK, so so while while you've got this staycation going on with your family, with your children, with your wife or your husband, and you're having a good time, you're relaxing every four hours depending on where you are, there's probably going to be a visit from a guard that says, hey, I got to search some stuff, because it's important to point out like this is not it's not like this occurs on the prison grounds. It's part of prison.

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It's just a modified part of prison. So there's plenty of rules and restrictions there that are meant to keep security tight, prevent contraband from being transferred from, you know, the visitors to the inmate and to just kind of keep things on the up and up, basically.

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Yeah. Like, for instance, you can't just waltz in there, like, if you've got a new sexy pen pal. And you said, well, I want to get a visit from this person. Now, you can't just waltz in there as a first timer and pop in and have a conjugal visit or even a family visit.

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Whatever you want to call it, you have to have it. I mean, it depends on where you are again. But like in New York, you have to have been at least a visitor, standard visitor three other times in the previous 12 months. So you have to be someone they know, someone who is proven to be, you know, a real connection in your life. You have to undergo health screening. And this is everyone, like kids, anyone that's going to stay in this apartment, you're going to get health screened, obviously, for conjugal visit.

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You're going to get STD tested.

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Like you mentioned. It depends on where you are. Lots of searches.

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I don't know if I know California is every four hours, but I imagine they like to spring those on you as well.

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Yeah, I would guess so. Not like I'll be back in four hours for the next one. I could kind of see, like, guards looking the other way or going kind of easy on these things. Like I could, I could. It just seems from every account that I've read, it seems like an overbearing mean guard is not the kind of guard they would put on this detail. It just doesn't seem like it fits this whole vibe, because, like you said, the the the the the people who are eligible for this are like the the model of the model inmates.

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Like they've really worked for this.

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Yeah.

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So only state prisons you are there currently only allowed in seven states down from its heyday in the early 90s of seventeen. And you have to or I guess it's they set it up so you're highly incentivized to do other jobs and other programs in order to get these conjugal visits. Right. Right. You have to like maybe do as you're involved in a school or a work based program, some kind of reentry program. And you got to show that you've done that and you've been successful in that.

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Obviously, the behavior like you can't have any dings on your violations and you. Or in your prison stay at all, no, and certainly no recent ones, like I get the impression that you could have in your past, but like, you know, you probably couldn't have in the last month or six months or some some set amount of time. And like you said, it needs to be part of this larger pattern of working toward being rehabilitated, like being in some sort of school or diploma program or some sort of work program, something that basically, combined with these family visits says, I'm thinking about how I'm going to behave on the outside and it's going to be good.

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I'm going to wow you so that that these extended family visits are kind of meant to support that and encourage that kind of thing to.

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Yeah. And again, depending on the state in the prison, what you're in there for is going to really matter.

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Obviously, if you're convicted of a sex crime, domestic violence, any kind of violence against children, you're not even going to be eligible. And the eligibility is really low in 2013. And this was the last year that they could in New Mexico. I think that they had conjugal visits. Only two percent of state prison inmates qualified in Mississippi that same year. It was zero point zero zero seven nine percent in New York, four percent in Washington. So the idea that you may be sold on TV by an angry politician that, you know, all of these prisoners are just in, they're having the time of their lives.

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Having sex is just false. Right?

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But it's just so easy to fall for because people don't you have to, like, look into this kind of stuff and he's going to do that.

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Nobody. So the weird thing is. Oh, yes, I forgot about us with an assist by Julia Layton. That's right. But the thing is, is like those percentages and the fact that there's only what you say, seven states now left.

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Thanks a lot. On the left that allow anything at all. Wow. And they're under they're under fire, as we'll see. Yeah, but the idea that the United States is kind of slowly getting rid of its its extended family visit system as part of prison life, that's that's a that's weird as far as Western style democracies are concerned. Countries around the world, especially Western style democracies, but also other ones, allow for, if not extended family visits at the very least conjugal visits.

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So there's there's actually you can it's easier to point out the Western democracies that don't allow it than it is that allow it. The ones that stand out in particular are Japan, New Zealand and Ireland and the UK. Yeah, they they absolutely don't. New Zealand doesn't because they view it as too much of a security risk. And it's a huge political hot potato over there to even suggest that they should do it. And then Japan, apparently their prison system is just like in the dark ages.

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It's meant to penalize criminals. They can sit there and think about what they did. Apparently, Japan is under fire constantly by human rights organizations for like using torture and stuff like that in their hearings. Yeah. Wow. They're like real backwards when it comes to prison for sure.

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But the idea is that it's it's part of a liberal democracy to have this kind of program as part of your prisons, at the very least, just to to keep your prison population less violent, supposedly. Yeah.

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Countries around the world where they are about to say LAX, but that's not true. I'm sure it's still very structured and organised, but more permissive. India, you they see it as a right and not a privilege as a human being. Saudi Arabia allows a conjugal visit per wife per month.

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Mm hmm. You know what that means?

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That means multiple wives equals multiple conjugal visits. That's right.

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Latin America, they are pretty generous with them. Brazil, the only requirement for visitors is good behaviour. Sometimes that can mean weekly. You don't have to be married. They do allow sex workers in Brazil to come in Canada.

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Not surprisingly, they allow three day family visits every two months for most inmates. Mm hmm. Where else? Germany. They basically it was sort of like anyone can get a conjugal visit up until about ten years ago when and this is, of course, the kind of thing you're going to see all over the news. Yeah, there was an inmate, a rapist and murderer who actually killed his girlfriend during a conjugal visit.

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So they said nine ruined it for everybody. Yeah. Although I don't think that they got rid of it. I think that they just changed the restrictions a little more.

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Yeah. And that is a real outlier. Obviously a terrible, sad, sad case. Yeah, but that is. That is, I didn't see anything else or anything like that it ever happened, but see, that's the thing that gets people right in the hypothalamus or something. And all of a sudden they're like, get rid of the ban and kill a few prisoners while you're at it for my satisfaction, because I need to calm down. Right.

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But so Russia, Spain, France, Turkey, Qatar, Costa Rica, Mexico, Denmark, Australia and Israel all have all have programs that include, at the very least, conjugal visits, if not family visits. And like you said, Brazil and most of South America. But the U.S. is not not hanging in there very well. We're just kind of slowly but surely getting rid of these things little by little. And from what I can tell, we keep talking about, you know, a politician pointing this out.

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All it takes is one determined politician and a couple of legislative sessions, and they're probably going to get their wish. And that seems to be what's been happening around the United States.

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Yeah, it doesn't seem like there is enough people on the other side that really, really want to fight to keep it going. We've seen Julius Julius in a couple of stories, one from Vice and one from medium, where they talk to real prisoners about the programs. And this one woman, Bernadette Talbert's, she spent I think she had two daughters in jail, in prison and was able to eventually spend time with those girls and said, you know, these fond memories, playing tag, cooking Chile, having long emotional conversations into the night with their daughters that are now grown.

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These 36 hour visits were treasured. And she said if it weren't for these trailer visits, I wouldn't be the woman that I am today. And that seems to be the resounding message any time you read these stories is that this is what made the difference for me in doing my time, keeping sane and then doing the right thing when I got out.

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Yeah, and if you I mean, if you want to just kind of get touched in the heart by some of these, like Reed, two point seven million kids have parents in prison. They're losing their right to visit. That's a headline for a Nation magazine article by Sylvia A. Harvey, whose father was in prison. And she was the one I cited who said that some of her fondest childhood memories are of these extended family visits. And she interviews some profiles, some other families who are kind of trying to, you know, keep their family together while the father or the mother is in prison, but are losing that because these extended visitations are being turned into just regular standard visitations.

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What most people think, like the Arrested Development, no touching kind of visit like that, sustained as what's called the standard visit. And they are not nearly satisfying because I think there's just one thing we haven't really pointed out, like, yes, it's important to have these family connections, but the way that these family connections are maintained is that in a standard visit or say it's like 30 minutes, maybe an hour in a room with a bunch of other families, inmates, a bunch of corrections officers like standing right over you, you're not going to have the conversations that you would normally have now, not anything illegal or whatever, but just personal, deeply personal stuff.

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And so to have one day or two days or three days together as a family, those conversations start to come up because in those standard visits, you got like an hour. You don't have time to bring up touchy stuff that could result in hard feelings because you know that there's not enough time to complete that cycle, to smooth out the hard feelings. Right. That's one of the great benefits of these extended family visits, is you can have these tough conversations, you can argue, you can snipe, you can discipline your kids because, you know, you have enough time to kind of work through it and process it and then strengthen those family bonds on the other side of it.

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That's the vital importance of these kind of visits and that's why they're so effective.

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Yeah, and I know our hearts are bleeding all over this episode. Fine.

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But like, I think to you would have to have zero heart to go beyond prison is for punishment to prison is should be punishment for your entire family. Right. That's a different thing. You know, these are children that are suffering and that that may go down the wrong path because if not for stuff like this, like there are a lot of other people involved that it would just help society as a whole if if a little more empathy were involved.

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Yeah. And I think really kind of that points out one of the big arguments, which I think we should take a break and we'll talk about the arguments against. But one of the arguments against Chuck is that, you know, people worry that there's going to be children born to automatic single parents because the conjugal visits, it's like, well, what about the kids whose parents are already in? Jail, and if you follow that, you know, ellipses all the way to the end, the response is, well, those kids, those kids should have been born then if their parents are in jail, that's what they're kind of saying when they're saying one of the reasons to cancel these programs because we don't want them.

[00:33:53]

We don't want pregnancies to result.

[00:33:55]

All right. Well, let's take a break. We'll talk about that rehabilitation and punishment and then data in the wake of right after this.

[00:34:19]

Hi, I'm Kristen Holmes. I've covered campaigns, Capitol Hill, the White House and everything Washington for CNN. But nothing tops the importance of this upcoming election and my job is to help you make sense of it all. Welcome to Election 101. For the next 10 weeks, we'll figure out the electoral process together. I've talk to experts, historians and some of you will address the safety of and voting, inform you of deadlines and make sure you know all your options.

[00:34:47]

You'll learn why voter registration is different from state to state and even from person to person. I'll help you figure out how to watch the debates a little more closely and how to get a better read on what the candidates really stand for. Yes, this election year is different and this is a different kind of podcast. Election one. One was created to help you learn how to make the most of your vote this November. Listen to election one to one every Wednesday on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

[00:35:22]

Paper Ghosts is a true crime podcast that investigates the search for the person responsible for the abductions of four missing girls in neighboring New England towns for more than 50 years. Each case has remain unsolved.

[00:35:36]

Every day is like being lost in limbo. I pray every day that we find Lisa so we can go on. It wasn't until this past year that things took an unexpected turn. Breakthrough answers to decades old questions and witnesses finally ready to talk.

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I don't think I can describe what he's wearing. It's only a mile away. Jesus, Mary and Josephine. I hope that's brave for many of you know what I think it is? Listen to paper ghosts on the radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, so, you know, we brought it up in the prisons episode, we brought it up in this episode, there are a couple of ways to look at prison and confinement, which is are we trying to rehabilitate these people?

[00:36:42]

And we trying to make society better as a whole? Are we trying to just punish people and as hard as possible? And we really don't care if society is better as a whole.

[00:36:51]

Right, right. Great synopsis, Chuck. Which side Eli on? Well, here's the big reveal. So clearly on the side of extended family visits, but it's not even like like, oh, I really get your point.

[00:37:11]

I get the other side's point or I can see both sides not even like that, it seems to me. And Layton goes to great lengths to kind of try to be diplomatic about it. But it's still just like, you know, this is this doesn't hold water at all. The arguments against are basically just gut reactions. It's like the same thing is a lot of arson investigation. It's like, well, you know, this feels a lot to me, like arson.

[00:37:36]

Put that person in prison for life and maybe on death row, like, that's the that's the same kind of correctional criminal justice instinct that seems to be driving the cancellation of these. And I have a lot of problems with anything that deeply impacts families negatively based on instinct rather than data in science. I think you really need to go to the trouble of producing your argument against in these cases rather than just canceling them outright with very little problems from the public.

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Yeah, because there's there's generally four arguments that are used against and to me, each of them have a lot of holes in them, cost morality, security and punishment cost.

[00:38:24]

You know, they they do charge people those costs are offset some, but there's no like like you said, give me the data. When you interview some of these people and some of these politicians that have said, no, you know, this is it's costing us a fortune. We're like, well, all right, how much is it costing? Show us. And then be like, oh, well, we don't really have a spreadsheet on that, but I'm sure it's a lot.

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Yeah, but it literally say things like that, like, well, you know, it hits the budget though.

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So there's there's one thing you can poke holes in morality. I mean, I think that one falls apart immediately because what is more moral than families being able to spend time with one another and strengthening a family bond or at least attempting to.

[00:39:03]

But that's what I'm saying. They use their public image of what a conjugal visit is. And the idea that, you know, an inmate, any inmate can just have sex with anybody they want during these visits and then they just don't explain what's actually being cancelled. They just call them conjugal visits. And then that's that. Right.

[00:39:18]

Because STD transmission was one sided by who was it, Mississippi State Rep Richard Bennett. Yeah.

[00:39:27]

And, you know, where's the data or is are STDs being spread through conjugal visits? They're not because there is no data. Right. But it's something very grabby on the news to hear. Security is another argument. But, you know, show me that you can you can manage security. Like that's something you can actually control. Right. You know, whether it's like maybe not a camera in the bedroom, but you can have cameras in the apartment.

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You can really watch them. You can come in every two hours and inspect things. You know, you can actually control security and make it a secure environment. Yeah.

[00:40:01]

And I also understand that the absence of evidence isn't proof, but I would guess that if anybody had been harmed, hurt, killed, maimed, abused during any of these one time, once in the history of these things in the United States, we would know all about it. And that would have been that they would have cancelled everything, just like in Germany. Exactly. It hasn't come up. I like the fact that we didn't run across. It is is pretty significant to me.

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I'm surprised they didn't lay it on Germany. I'm surprised happened over there. Yeah. Look, it happened me look like it's all Merkel's fault.

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New Mexico is a state that also had sort of the same. And the reasoning is generally the same wherever you go, which was some kind of moral outrage in this case.

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There was Michael Guzman, who was a prisoner in New Mexico, that he was actually a convicted murderer.

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So I'm really surprised. Yes. That he was even allowed. I'm not sure how that happened, but he conceived four children with different women, different wives in conjugal visits. So he was getting married to different women in prison and having kids. And that was sort of like the poster child in New Mexico for why they shouldn't do stuff like that.

[00:41:19]

Right, exactly. So that one guy is basically the one thing that American extended family visitation can hang its head on for anybody who's looking to get rid of those things. But then the other part of the moral thing, and I said it earlier, the idea that it's up to Department of Corrections officials or state representatives to decide whether a family of an incarcerated person, whether these parents want to have another kid or not, has nothing to do with them.

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It's not up to these prison officials to decide that kind of family planning. And it smacks of eugenics and racism to to think that they that that's something they talk about publicly. It's something they cite that, you know, we don't want people having, you know, kids even though they're married because the moms is going to be a single parent or the dad's going to be a single parent. And it's just not something we're interested in. That one really gets my gets my goat.

[00:42:13]

Yeah.

[00:42:13]

The the thing that gets my goat is just the lack of data in this gut reaction thing. The Department of Corrections in New Mexico said they didn't see an upside and they told local media that after two years of research, we found that it did not affect recidivism rates. And they said, oh, well, can I see the details of the study? And they said, well, it was not so much a study. The literal quote was we looked at individual inmates.

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There was no study.

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Oh, well, where's the report on it then? This is well, we don't have one, right.

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I basically just went through a couple of files before I came out here. You're a local paper. I'm blown away that you asked any follow up questions whatsoever, I think is what he was saying.

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But here's the thing is one side of this argument is not studied. There are no reports. There's very little research and data. The other side has a lot of data, actually, and we know that.

[00:43:05]

I think it was trying to find who did the study that found Yale.

[00:43:10]

Yeah, yeah. The study here. And there was a 67 percent decrease in recidivism with programs like this installed. 67 percent. Yeah, that's huge. The Minnesota Department of Corrections also did a study that basically back that up, too. And the thing is, is if you talk to prison officials typically and like the ones who actually work in the prisons and criminologists like people who actually have degrees in studying this kind of stuff, they say, no, this is actually a really good program and it does have an impact on recidivism because while we're still compiling data on extended family visits as as it stands.

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We do know that the family is in a really important factor in this transition to from prison to society, and so anything that could strengthen that bond is a plus. The other thing we didn't really talk about was the cost. People point to the cost and cost savings and stuff. I think New Mexico, before they shut theirs down, it was one hundred and twenty thousand dollars a year for this program. Washington State spends eighty six thousand dollars a year.

[00:44:23]

And both of those prison systems charged families to have these visitations. So the idea that they don't work and that they're expensive and that there's a moral component to them, there's basically no argument against and then there's data in favor of the argument for these things. And yet they seem to be going the way of Desco in the United States, sadly.

[00:44:46]

Yeah. And not only I mean, you can just talk about regular visits. There was a study in 2011 that found that inmates who got just regular standard visits, these are not conjugal. These are not extended or overnight family visits, just visiting people in person while in prison were 13 percent less likely to return to prison than an inmate who received no visits. Yeah.

[00:45:08]

So they also, very surprisingly to uncontroversially, there was a study that found that prisons in correctional systems in states that never had any family visitation programs had four times more inmate on inmate sexual assault than than prisons that don't, which apparently really flies in the face of common wisdom or common consensus on what the purpose of sexual assault in prison is, that everybody thinks it's power base. Like actually there might be a sexual aspect to it as well. That had been overlooked to this point.

[00:45:47]

Yeah, like sexual desires not being met. And you're right that that is contrary to everything we've ever heard about sexual assault in prison, I think. Yeah.

[00:45:57]

And while it's kind of rich to point to anecdotal data after just disassembling anecdotal data, there is a lot of sentiment, including among Washington State's Department of Corrections. They have a brochure for their family visitation that basically says an isolated inmate is a dangerous inmate. So that one of the sentiments that kind of was carried along for family visitation and visitation in general is this idea that it it it keeps prisoners in line in the prison, which improves security in the prison as well.

[00:46:29]

Yeah.

[00:46:29]

See our episode on or was that in the prisons episode? That we just one on ice or solitary, we did one on solitaire, we did, and we did a prisons one too. Yeah, I mean that's a nice little robust and we're popular in prisons, too. So, yeah, we help prisoners learn to read sometimes.

[00:46:49]

Yeah. So they might be listening to this right now. Yes.

[00:46:51]

Special shout out to all the prisoners listening to the stay up if someone is listening to this with a family during their family visit. Oh my gosh.

[00:47:01]

I would really like to hear about that. I think that's some t shirts right there. Yeah. Yeah, at the very least. So, yeah, let us know and we'll send you some T-shirts because that's a that is one heck of a specific listen.

[00:47:12]

Well, like you said, this is definitely going away though in a big way in the US down to seven states now.

[00:47:21]

I mean, prison visits. I don't know if they're really trying to get rid of them. covid has given them a big opportunity to to do that because more and more prison visit policies or programs have revolved around like, you know, zoo meetings and virtual meetings and stuff like that. And with covid, that's a. I could see it being used to be like, do we really want to bring like there's a lot of cost associated with just regular visits?

[00:47:47]

You know, we could just set up a computer room and have them go in there and have little room meetings with their family. Yeah. Which I mean, is better than nothing. But sure, if these extended family visits are the the gold standard and then standard visits are the ho hum standard virtual visits, I mean, yeah. I mean I've done some hangouts before and they get old really fast.

[00:48:13]

They do. But I tell you what. Of course my heart is bleeding on this one, but like do those like every day.

[00:48:21]

Yeah. I wonder though if there's just as many restrictions around those too, because I think you have to, you know, demonstrate that you're in good standing in your prison too.

[00:48:30]

Yeah, probably so. So that's it. Next time you hear somebody trying to cancel family extended family visitation in your state, maybe don't just say, yeah, serves them right. Think think about it. Maybe vote against it if you want to. This episode touched you like an angel touched by an angel. You got anything else? Nothing. Uh, well, since I said touched by an angel, of course, as usual, that means it's time for the listener mail.

[00:48:59]

I'm going to call this one short and sweet factoid from a movie crusher. I'm pretty sure Aaron Mysel is a movie crusher.

[00:49:06]

Josh and Chuck, good morning. Just listen to the episode on Frances Perkins. I'm guessing you guys have seen the movie Dirty Dancing.

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Well, Aaron, if you listen to our shorty on the disappearing, like disappearing like, you know, we have, uh, well, there's a part where Johnny s baby, what her real name is, and I don't remember this in the movie, but she said her response was Frances after the first woman in the cabinet. So baby in the movie Dirty Dancing was named after Frances Perkins. Right. Pretty cool.

[00:49:34]

Amazing. Nobody puts Frances in the cabinet. Well, somebody did. Oh, yeah. That didn't work. So that's one of the best that's seriously ever. And that's one of the best facts I've ever heard in my entire life. Pretty good movie movie trivia ever. Yeah.

[00:49:50]

And very, very much on the down low, I think. I bet most people who are dirty dancing heads did not catch that line and know what I meant.

[00:49:58]

No, you have to know both of those things. There's probably a very small it might just be Aaron Moselle. Yeah, that's to Aaron Moselle, listener e-mails in like a week or two. She's got to get some sort of trophy for that. Did I read another one from her? Yeah, she was the one who wrote in with the S y five K.

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Oh, really? Yeah. That's so she may not be a movie crusher then. Maybe I'm just remembering from that. She probably is. I mean, there's a lot of crossover. Right. All right. Well if you want to let us know something so astounding that you get put on listener mail twice in like a week, we want to hear it. We're really ready for those kind of emails. Go ahead and send them off to stuff. Podcast I heart radio dot com.

[00:50:48]

Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows? Twenty years, nine Super Bowl appearances, six Super Bowl championships, the New England Patriots of Tom Brady and Bill Belichick are the greatest dynasty in NFL history. I'm Gary Myers, NFL sports journalist for over 40 years. Join me for a new podcast, The Goat, Tom Brady.

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I pull back the curtain on the greatest run of sustained success by one player and one team in NFL history with never before heard interviews with Bill Belichick, Bill Parcells, Robert Kraft, Tom Brady, senior coaches, friends, family, and, of course, the greatest of all time, Tom Brady.

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The margin of error so slim. And there was a couple of plays in each of those games that it goes our way. We win, and that's football. That's the way it works. And that's why it's hard to win Super Bowls.

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