Against Conjugal Visits in Prison: A Critical Appraisal of the Misplaced Notion of Intimacy as a Right behind Bars

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-505-8_17How to use a DOI?

Abstract

This article critically examines the emerging discourse that advocates for conjugal visits in prison, particularly the notion that sexual intimacy should be recognized as a fundamental right for incarcerated individuals. While some jurisdictions have adopted limited conjugal visitation programs, this paper argues that such policies are not only normatively flawed but also risk undermining the core objectives of incarceration, including deterrence, retribution, and moral rehabilitation. Through a comparative legal analysis, this article demonstrates that countries such as Japan, the United Kingdom, and Indonesia have deliberately refrained from institutionalizing conjugal visits, favoring prison discipline and civil moral restoration over facilitating personal gratification. Conversely, jurisdictions that have implemented such programs such as certain U.S. states and Latin American countries have faced serious challenges, including administrative abuse, unequal access, and ongoing moral controversy. The article asserts that framing conjugal visits as a “right” misconstrues the nature of incarceration as a legally sanctioned deprivation of liberty, not a space to preserve all pre-incarceration life aspects. Moreover, prioritizing sexual intimacy in the prison context risks policy distortion and diverts attention from more urgent inmate needs such as healthcare, education, and reintegration support. Ultimately, the paper contends that states have no legal, moral, or rehabilitative obligation to facilitate sexual access for inmates, and doing so may in fact undermine the foundational purposes of punishment. Calls to institutionalize conjugal visits especially within transitional or developing legal systems should thus be met with rigorous critical scrutiny and, where appropriate, outright rejection.

Copyright

© 2025 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Junifer Dame Panjaitan
AU  - Sujono
PY  - 2025
DA  - 2025/12/12
TI  - Against Conjugal Visits in Prison: A Critical Appraisal of the Misplaced Notion of Intimacy as a Right behind Bars
BT  - Proceedings of the 7th Open Society Conference 2025 (OSC 2025)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 203
EP  - 213
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-505-8_17
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-505-8_17
ID  - Panjaitan2025
ER  -