Stuff You Should Know - Conjugal Visits: Not exactly what you think

Episode Date: September 29, 2020

After reaching their peak, conjugal prison visits are all but gone in the U.S. Learn all about these frisky visits in today's episode. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're gonna use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s.

We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeart radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, and there's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and there's Jerry over there.

And this is Stuff You Should Know, another prison edition. We're starting to fill it out a little bit, aren't we? Yeah, I 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. 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 kind of a human rights criminology thing. Yeah, but you're sort of right that it's not really much of a thing.

Which is sad, I've learned. Yeah? I think so, I think any, yeah, we'll get to it, but yes, I'm in favor of extended family visits, which may or may not include tanks. Eer, er, er, er. Yeah. You know where I got that from? No.

Hobgoblins, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 version of Hobgoblins. Okay. It's pretty great. Just go check it out. It'll show up eventually. Yeah, well, I mean, you mentioned sexy time, and I think when you think of conjugal visits,

that's the first, 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, and you generally think of like a wife going to have sex with her inmate husband.

Yeah, 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 have never heard one before. Yeah, that ranks you right up there with mouth parts.

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? Really?

No, I'm just kidding. But you could see it though, couldn't you? Wouldn't that be like one of those random things where as an adult, you went back and you're like, I can't believe like this is part of this cartoon. 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. 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. Cause it's really easy to get rid of if you are so minded. It's very easy to get rid of and as you'll see or you know, or hear 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 couple of times a month. But no, like we really have to watch. 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. And this is 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, well, we'll get to that too. So let's talk about how, 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? Yeah, the basically racist origins in Mississippi, Mississippi State Pen in the early 1900s, there was a for-profit labor camp called Parchment Farm, where the warden basically said, you know what? Everybody knows 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. That's the origin of conjugal visits. Period. 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 what, 1918? Yeah, 1918 is when he started bringing in sex workers. Right. And you just hit the nail on the head as it were. On Sundays, no less. On Sundays, the warden would bring in sex workers for to lay with the inmates and do more than just laying.

Yeah, like married, not a problem, single, not a problem. We got the shack out in the back and, you know, I don't know if you wanna be like 10th on that list for the day, but that's how we're gonna do things around here. Yeah, and 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 inmates. Yeah. And along the way, what's crazy is between that gulf of time, 1918 and 1972, when women first became eligible in Mississippi for conjugal visits, it underwent this kind of like surprising enlightenment transition to where there was a 1966 maybe

study that was done on it. And 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, 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, 45 years, it seems like they were bringing in every Sunday sex workers to, I guess, lay with, yeah, to incentivize these guys. Yeah, right, right.

And so I think that's where the transition came where it became enlightened is 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 like, what is that? Go watch 13th, the Ava DuVernay documentary on 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 as an extension of slavery. But that was what this was. This was Jim Crow slavery. It 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 like good for society, weirdly, it's going to keep these family ties between the inmates and the people they've been separated from 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, they're still going to have these relationships that they had before they went in. Yeah, and so 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, 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. Yeah, so that was the peak and one of the reasons the early 90s were the peak was because 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 citizens, 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. 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 were in there for a reason and 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 really ultimately, this is punishment and we're not going to treat you like a human being any longer,

you're a prisoner, it's a different kind of person and part of that is taking away conjugal visits. Right, and that line of thinking, like you said, was a pretty big sea change and now we don't have crime. Right, it worked, Newt Gingrich's plan worked. 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. Brat analogue. Little boy. Little boy. Baby take a look. He actually like to have a crush. On the podcast, HeyDude the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the

cult classic show HeyDude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use HeyDude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64?

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Listen to HeyDude, the 90s, called on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast, Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation?

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Yep, we know that Michael. And a different hot, sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Uh-huh. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now.

So tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, Chuck, so, um, let's talk a little bit about, like, what these things evolve to along the way, because if you're just sitting there like, okay, 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 what are, like you said, called extended family visits or family reunion visits. And they involved not just spouses, um, but also kids, um, the parents of the, the inmate might come to visit, um, siblings might come to visit, and there was no sex involved. It was family time, like that was the point of the whole thing was to spend time with family. And, um, if you read some of the accounts of, of the children of inmates who have memories of going to these extended family visits, um, they form, these are like the memories

of their lifetime, like these are some of their best childhood memories, ironically enough. And, you know, the whole purpose here is, is primarily two-fold, 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, um, you really, really have to follow the rules. Like very few prisoners are even eligible for this kind of thing. Right. Um, and then the other thing is, you know, just to foster that family tie.

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, uh, 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. Uh, so when they get out, the idea is that they have a support system there waiting on them and not like, well, now I have the superman.

The super awkward, uh, moment where I have to come in and, and get to know my teenage children. 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. Yeah.

And 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 they're, they're alone out there. And as we'll see, we have statistics to back it up. Recidivism is, uh, is a big problem and 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, uh, 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, um, that is the, 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. So here's, uh, and we'll get to some of these stories too in a second, but here's how it works depending on where you are, um, 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. Yeah. But, um, they try to set it up. I mean, it depends on whether there's a, uh, like a shack in the back or a trailer sometimes. Um, 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.

Uh, this one in Connecticut, McDougal Walker, uh, 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. Uh, I think they, they have like stock DVDs and stuff like that. Um, but I think you are allowed to even bring in everything's heavily inspected of course, but you are allowed to bring in food to cook like your favorite family meal. And they're not just like, well, here's what you got from the prison pantry.

Yeah. That's what I, I, um, saw as well. And I think more than just, um, I think that's part, partly in, uh, economical decision too. Sure. Because they also charge, um, there's, you know, it can be a nominal fee. Like in, I think, uh, New York, maybe or Washington, I think Washington, it's like $10 a visit or something like that. But, um, you know, every penny counts in some of the, uh, the, uh, budget deficit prisons

in the United States. Um, so they do kind of count those pennies, but more, more to the point, the point of bringing in outside food is to create that sense of normalcy for the family. Um, it's basically like a staycation on prison grounds is what I, what like ideally is what I got from, from the research I did. Yeah. Like if the prisoner's favorite dessert is a fingernail file cake and that's what they're getting.

That can't be helped. Talk about it a movie trope. Has that ever happened in the history of the world? I don't know. We got to find out now though. You just threw down the gauntlet. Like a prison, a fingernail file being snuck in a cake and that leading to an escape. I think it's, I think it's probably never happened.

We'll find out. All right. That reminds me though. I've been wanting to do an episode on the three stooches. That may be a two-parter. Oh man. That's, uh, prepare for, uh, no women to listen. It's so great.

They're so good, man. Yeah. It's kind of a dude's thing though. Maybe we'll change that with our episodes. There should have been a counterpart. Yeah. You know. I wonder if there was, I'm sure they tried that out at some point during the middle.

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 stooches and how realistic that was. Right. Man, seriously, I watch that sometimes still today and. No, it's, it's classic. Yes. It really is.

And for a good reason. It's, it's hilarious, but also just so well choreographed and those dudes worked hard. No, no, I think we should totally do a, uh, an episode on that. I love it. Okay. Um, so while, while you've got this staycation going on with your family, with your children, with your wife or your husband, um, and you're, you're having a good time. You're relaxing, um, 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, um, because it's, it's important to point out, like this is not, it's not like this, this occurs on the prison grounds, it's part of prison. It's just a modified part of prison. So there's plenty of rules and restrictions that are meant to keep security tight, prevent contraband from being transferred from, you know, the visitors to the inmate. Um, and, uh, to just kind of keep things on the up and up basically. Yeah.

Like, uh, for instance, you can't just waltz in there. Like if you've got a new, uh, sexy pen pal and, um, 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, whatever you want to call it. You have to have, 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 has proven to be, you know, a real, uh,

like connection in your life, um, you have to undergo health screening and this is everyone, like kids, anyone that's going to stay in this apartment, um, you're going to get health screened obviously for conjugal visits, you're going to get STD tested, um, like you mentioned, it depends on where you are. Lots of searches. Um, I don't know if I know California was every four hours, but I imagine they like to spring those on you as well. Yeah.

I would guess so too. Not like we'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, um, the, the people who are eligible for this are like the, the model of the model inmates, like they've really worked for this.

Yeah. So only state prisons, uh, you are, they're currently only allowed in seven states down from its heyday in the early nineties of 17. And you have to, or I guess it's, um, they set it up. So you're highly incentivized to do other jobs and other programs in order to get these conjugal visits. So you have to like maybe do, uh, you're involved in a school or a work based program, some kind of re-entry program, and you got to show that you've done that and you've been successful

in that. Obviously the behavior, like you can't have any dings on your, or violations in your, in your prison, uh, 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 like month or six months or some, some set amount of time. Um, and like you said, it needs to be part of like this larger pattern of, um, working

toward being rehabilitated, like being in a, 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. 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 too. Yeah. And, uh, again, depending on the state in the prison, um, what you're in there for is going to really matter.

Um, 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. Um, in 2013, and this was the last year that they could, uh, in New Mexico, I think that they had conjugal visits. Uh, only 2% of state prison inmates qualified. Uh, in Mississippi that same year it was 0.007. Right.

Uh, 9% in New York, 4% 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 there having the time of their lives, having sex is just false. Right. Um, but it's just so easy to fall for because you, people don't, you have to like look into this kind of stuff. And who's going to do that? Nobody.

Us. Oh yeah, us, I forgot about us, um, with an assist by Julia Layton. That's right. Um, but the thing is, uh, like those percentages and the fact that there's only, what'd you say, seven states now left that allow anything at all. Wow. Um, and they're under, they're under fire, as we'll see. Yeah.

But the idea that, um, the United States is kind of slowly getting rid of its, its, um, extended family visit system as part of prison life, that's, that's a, that's a, we feared as far as Western style democracies are concerned, um, countries around the world, especially Western style democracies, but also other ones allow for, um, if not extended family visits at the very least conjugal visits. 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, uh, New Zealand, um, and Ireland, uh,

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. 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 prisons. Yeah. Wow. They're like real backwards when it comes to prison for sure. Um, 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, um, countries around the world where, uh, they are, I was about to say lax, but that's not true. I'm sure it's still very structured and organized, but more permissive. Um, India, you, they see it as a right and not a privilege as a human being. Um, Saudi Arabia allows a conjugal visit per wife per month. You know what that means. That means multiple wives equals multiple conjugal visits. That's right.

Uh, Latin America, they are pretty generous with them. In Brazil, the only requirement for visitors is good behavior. Um, sometimes that can mean weekly. You don't have to be married. They do allow sex workers in Brazil to come in, uh, Canada. Not surprisingly, they allow three day family visits every two months for most inmates, uh, where else Germany they, um, basically it was sort of like anyone can get a conjugal visit up until about 10 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, uh, a rapist and murderer who actually killed his girlfriend during a conjugal visit. So they'd 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, uh, restrictions a little more. Yeah. And that is a real outlier, um, obviously a terrible, sad, sad case. Yeah. Um, that is, that is, uh, I didn't see anything else or anything like that had ever happened. But see that's the thing that gets people right in the, what, the hypothalamus or something and all of a sudden they're like, get rid of it, ban it and kill a few prisoners while you're at it for my satisfaction because I need to calm down.

Right. But it's so Russia, Spain, France, Turkey, Qatar, Costa Rica, Mexico, Denmark, Australia and Israel all have, um, 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, um, 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. All it takes is one, um, 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. Yeah. It doesn't seem like there is, uh, enough people on the other side that really, really want to fight to keep it going. Um, we've seen a Julius and in a couple of stories, one from vice and one from medium

where they talk to real prisoners, uh, about the programs and this one woman, uh, Bernadette Stalbitz, um, she spent, I think she had two daughters in jail and prison and was able to eventually spend time with those girls and said, you know, these fond memories playing tag, cooking chili, having long emotional conversations into the night with their daughters that are now grown, um, 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 anytime 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. Yeah. And if you, I mean, if you want to, um, just kind of get, um, touched in the heart by some of these, like read, uh, 2.7 million kids have parents in prison, they're losing their right to visit, that's a headline, um, for a nation magazine article by Sylvia A. Harvey, whose father, uh, was in prison and she, she was the one I cited to who said that some of her fondest childhood memories are of these extended family visits. And she interviews and some, and profiles some other families who are kind of trying

to, um, you know, keep their family together while the father or the mother is in prison, but are losing that because these, um, extended visitations are being turned into just regular standard visitations. What most people think like the arrested development, no touching, um, kind of visit, like that's a stand 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 where say it's like 30 minutes, maybe an hour, uh, in a room

with a bunch of other families and inmates, a bunch of corrections officers like standing right over you, you're not going to have the conversations that you would normally have. Not anything illegal or whatever, but just personal, deeply personal stuff. 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 the hard feelings because you know that there's not enough time to complete that cycle to smooth out the hard feelings. 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. That's the vital importance of these kind of visits and that's why they're so effective. Yeah. And I know our hearts are bleeding all over this episode, fine. But like, I think you would have to have a zero heart to go beyond prison is for punishment,

to prison should be punishment for your entire family. That's a different thing. You know, these are children that are suffering and 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 a little more empathy were involved. Yeah. And I think really kind of that points out one of the big arguments, which I think we should take a break and then 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 of the conjugal visits. And it's like, well, what about the kids whose parents are already in jail? And if you follow that, you know, ellipsis all the way to the end, the response is, well, those kids shouldn't 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, we don't want pregnancies to result. All right.

Well, let's take a break. We'll talk about that rehabilitation and punishment and then data and the lack of right after this. Hey, dude, the 90s called David Lasher and Christine Taylor stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends

to come back and relive it. It's a podcast packed with interviews, co-stars, friends, and non-stop references to the best decade ever. Do you remember going to Blockbuster? Do you remember Nintendo 64? Do you remember getting Frosted Tips? Was that a cereal?

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Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, so, you know, we brought it up in the prison's 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, and are we trying to make society better as a whole?

Are we trying to just punish people as hard as possible, and we really don't care if society is better as a whole? Right. Great synopsis, Chuck. Which side do you lie on? Well, here's the big reveal. So, clearly, on the side of extended family visits, but it's not even like a, oh, I really get your point.

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 is still just like, you know, this doesn't hold water at all. The arguments against are basically just gut reactions. It's like the same thing as a lot of arson investigation.

It's like, well, you know, this feels a lot to me like arson. Put that person in prison for life, and maybe on death row. Like, 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 and science. I think you really need to go to the trouble

of producing your argument against in these cases rather than just canceling them out with very little problems from the public. Yeah, because 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, you know, they do charge people.

Those costs are offset some. But there's no, 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 costing us a fortune. And we're like, well, all right, how much is it costing? Show us. And they'll be like, well, we don't really

have a spreadsheet on that. But I'm sure it's a lot. Yeah, but it literally say things like that. Like, well, you know, it hits the budget, though. So 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. But that's what I'm saying. They use that public image of what a conjugal visit is and the idea that, you know, any inmate can just have sex with anybody they want during these visits. And then they just don't explain what's actually being canceled. They just call them conjugal visits and then that's that. Right, because STD transmission was

one cited by who was it? Mississippi State rep Richard Bennett. Yeah. And like, you know, where's the data? 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 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. 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, 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.

That would have canceled everything. Just like in Germany. Exactly. It hasn't come up. Like, the fact that we didn't run across it is pretty significant to me. I'm surprised they didn't lay it on Germany. See what happened over there?

Yeah. Look, it happened here. Look, like it's all Merkel's fault. New Mexico was 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, there was Michael Guzman, who was a prisoner in New Mexico, that he was actually

a convicted murderer. So I'm really surprised 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. Right, exactly. So that one guy is basically the one thing that American extended family visitation can hang its hat 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, it has nothing to do with them. It's not up to these prison officials to decide that kind of family planning. And it smacks of eugenics and racism to think that that's something they talk about publicly.

It's something they cite. We don't want people having 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 that's just not something we're interested in. That one really gets my goat. Yeah, the thing that gets my goat is just the lack of data. And 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. There was no study.

Oh, well, where's the report on it then? And they said, well, we don't have one. Right. 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 you were saying. 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 I think it was, I'm trying to find who did the study that found. Yale?

Yeah, Yale did a study. The law and policy review. And there was a 67% decrease in recidivism with programs like this installed. 67%. Yeah, that's huge. The Minnesota Department of Corrections also did a study that basically backed that up, too.

And the thing is, is if you talk to prison officials typically and 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 it stands,

we do know that the family is a really important factor in this transition 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 $120,000 a year for this program. Washington State spends $86,000 a year.

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 disco

in the United States, sadly. 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% less likely to return to prison

than an inmate who received no visits. Yeah, they also, very surprisingly too, and controversially, there was a study that found that prisons in stair correctional systems in states that never had any family visitation programs had four times more inmate on inmate sexual assault 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. Everybody thinks it's power based. They're like, actually, there might be a sexual aspect to it as well that had been overlooked to this point. Yeah, like sexual desires not being met, and you're right, that is contrary to everything we've ever heard about sexual assault in prison, I think.

Yeah, 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 States Department of Corrections, they have a brochure for their family visitation that basically says an isolated inmate is a dangerous inmate. So one of the sentiments that kind of was carried along for family visitation, and visitation in general,

is this idea that it keeps prisoners in line in the prison, which improves security in the prison as well. Yeah, see our episode on, or was that in the prison's episode that we did one on solitary? We did one on solitary, and we did a prison's one too. Yeah, I mean that's, we got a nice little robust,

and we're popular in prisons too, so. Yeah, we help prisoners learn to read sometimes. Yeah, so they might be listening to this right now. Yes, special shout out to all the prisoners listening to this, stay up. If someone is listening to this with a family, during their family visit. Oh my gosh.

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

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 do that, because more and more prison visit policies, or programs have revolved around, like, you know, Zoom 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 wanna bring, like,

there's a lot of costs associated with just regular visits, you know? We could just set up a computer room, and have them go in there, and have little Zoom meetings with their family. Yeah, which I mean, is better than nothing, but if these extended family visits are the gold standard, and then standard visits are the ho-hum standard,

virtual visits, I mean, yeah. I mean, I've done Zoom hangouts before, and they get old really fast. They do, but I tell you what, of course, my heart is bleeding on this one, but like, do those like every day. 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. 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, it serves them right. It's like, think about it, maybe vote against it, if you want to, if this episode touched you like an angel.

Touched by an angel. You got anything else? Nothing. Well, since I said touched by an angel, of course, as usual, that means it's time for a listener mail. I'm going to call this one short and sweet factoid from a movie crusher. I'm pretty sure Erin Miselle is a movie crusher.

Josh and Chuck, good morning. Just listened to the episode on Francis Perkins. I'm guessing you guys have seen the movie Dirty Dancing. Well, Erin, if you listen to our shorty on the- Disappearing Lake. Disappearing Lake, you know we have. Well, there's a part where Johnny asks Baby what her real name is, and I don't remember this in the movie,

but she said her response was, Francis, after the first woman in the cabinet. So Baby, in the movie, Dirty Dancing was named after Francis Perkins. Right. Pretty cool. It's amazing, nobody puts Francis in the cabinet. Well, somebody did.

Oh, wait, yeah, it didn't work. That's one of the best, that's seriously Erin, that's one of the best facts I've ever heard in my entire life. It's pretty good. Best movie trivia ever. Yeah, and very, very much on the down, though, I think. But I bet most people who are Dirty Dancing heads did not catch that line and know what it meant.

No, you have to know both of those things. Yes, you do. And there's probably a very small, it might just be Erin Mazzell. Yeah. That's two Erin Mazzell listener males in 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 SY5K. Oh, really? Yeah, that's Erin Mazzell. 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 male 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 at iHeartRadio.com. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app.

Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the podcast, Hey Dude, the 90s called, David Lasher and Christine Taylor, stars of the cult classic show, Hey Dude, bring you back to the days of slip dresses and choker necklaces. We're going to use Hey Dude as our jumping off point, but we are going to unpack and dive back into the decade of the 90s. We lived it, and now we're calling on all of our friends to come back and relive it. Listen to Hey Dude, the 90s called on the iHeart Radio app,

Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to podcasts.