Fishman's Sex In Prison

A majority of the prison rape research has explored correctional institutions in the U.S. Joseph Fishman paved the road for future prison rape scholars with his classic work published in 1934 about American prisons, entitled, Sex in Prison. Fishman’s contributions in the establishment of prison rape research are noteworthy. Such contributions included a theoretical basis that postulated as to why same-sex relations occurred inside correctional facilities, which was termed the deprivation theory. This theoretical argument would then be reworked three decades later into Sykes’ (1968) seminal research that detailed the five cardinal deprivations faced on a daily basis by the incarcerated populations, which included the prohibition of heterosexual relationships. Although emerging scholarship has argued against the deprivation theory, and re-oriented the discussion with empirical evidence that indicated sexual relations inside …show more content…
Although highly criticized, conjugal visits are one such harm-reduction technique that has been practiced. One of the primary criticisms is that conjugal visits promote the passage of infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS among visitors, which can then be passed onto persons in general society (Castle, 2014). A concern that is validated by statistics that showed rates of infectious diseases are higher among the incarcerated when compared to persons outside those walls. The feasibility to treat and prevent these infectious diseases among the inmate population are hindered by issues unique to correctional facilities, such as the lack of financial resources, lack of access to medical treatment, high traffic of persons, etc. (Potter and Rosky 2014). Due for these reasons, conjugal visits have waned in popularity since the early 1970s (Castle 2014), but there have been and are other harm-reduction