Chains of Love

Siobhan O'Connor writes in GOOD Magazine about the problems facing marriages with prison inmates, and efforts to strenthen inmate marriages:

Faith-based groups have been doing similar work in prisons for decades. Sometimes called Marriage Encounters, these weekend marriage seminars are hosted by several guards, the prison chaplain, and volunteer instructors, like Wayne and Marcia Kessler in Las Vegas. "The first thing we do," says Marcia, "is teach about talking on a feeling level and how feelings are different from thoughts and judgments. That no feeling is right or wrong. Anger isn’t wrong, but smacking someone is."

The programs implemented in Oklahoma, a pioneering state for prison marriage classes, are a different animal altogether. Based on curricula co-created by Howard Markman, a researcher at the University of Denver, these classes are by and large the same as marriage classes offered to non-inmates. In five years, more than 1,000 Oklahoma inmates have voluntarily participated, many of them with their wives. "Inmates tell me they love the program because it actually allows them to do something for their marriage," says JoAnne Eason, the Oklahoma Marriage Initiative’s vice president of special projects. "There is so little they can do for the marriage while they are incarcerated. They look at it like, I want my relationship to last. I know most relationships do not last through incarceration, and so if there is something I can do to make this last and if my partner is really willing, then I want to do this.’" Some studies cite a prison divorce rate as high as 80 percent within the first year.

While data is still being evaluated, Markman says, "So far, [inmates] are happier with their relationships, handle conflict better, and are seemingly extending some of those conflict-management skills to other aspects of their life inside prison. … I certainly think overall the goal is that we will be able to reduce the recidivism rate if we do this on a large scale."

"We are not out there encouraging people to go out and get married," says Eason. "If we can help people who were married when they came in or want to get married, and this is the most important thing to an inmate to avoid recidivism, that sounds like a good thing." Few would disagree that reducing the country’s recidivism rate should be a national priority; the issue, rather, is how the government attempts to do that. For the marriage initiative’s critics, the issue isn’t Should inmates get married, but Should the government be spending taxpayer dollars teaching them, and tens of thousands of non-incarcerated men, to listen and talk better? A recent report by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services indicated that marriage classes in prison are still a contentious issue, and many women feel there are more immediate changes—cheaper phone calls, longer visits, better access to information—that would make their lives and marriages a whole lot easier.

H/T to BOP Watchdog.