The Howard League for Penal Reform will spend two years researching it.
Ireland and the UK has a ban on conjugal visits for prisoners, because prison is seen as a public place. Australia, Canada, Brazil and more than half of European countries allow them. There were 140 rapes in British jails in 2010 and a handful in Ireland over that period but many rapes in jail go unreported.
The idea behind conjugal visits is to allow prisoners and their wives or husbands time to get close and keep the intimacy between them. This will help the prisoner return to society when they get let out.
The Irish law states ‘Right to Procreate and/or Conjugal Rights You do not have a right to temporary release or conjugal visits. If you are married, you have a right to communicate with your spouse, but without privacy. You also have a right to take some part in the education of your children.’
Many Irish prisoners are calling for conjugal rights even though some of these prisoners are in jail as a punishment for committing some very serious crimes and we need to remember the victims. Newly released prisoners outside the gates of Mountjoy Prison in Dublin gave me their view. There are over 14,000 prisoners in the 14 jails across the state. The prisoners Henry McKean met say conditions have improved and there are less drugs and gangs at the moment but all complained about the food saying you wouldn’t feed it to a dog.
Many people think that by going to jail you could become ‘gay for the stay’ this is what prisoners and prisoner wives had to say.
