Penology: Duplex

“When I was in San Quentin,” Benito Arzaga remembers, “we were allowed to visit with our families—if they stayed on one side of the table and we stayed on the other. My kids would reach out their hands to me to try to touch me. I’d look up at the guard, and he’d shake his head. The kids would start crying and yelling ‘Daddy.’ I couldn’t do nothing. Just sit there and watch my kids crying.”

Arzaga, 29, still has five months to serve of a four-year sentence for narcotics possession, yet last month he not only touched his two kids but romped with them on a broad green lawn. For three days and two nights, he was father and husband again, living with his family in a pleasant duplex ranch house on the grounds of California’s State Correctional Institute at Tehachapi.

So began Tehachapi’s “family visiting program,” one of the boldest experiments in the history of American penal reform. Some prisons in Europe and Latin America have long allowed their inmates to receive brief “conjugal visits” from wives and girl friends for the purpose of sexual release. In Mississippi, the state penitentiary at Parchman has allowed similar visits for at least fifty years (TIME, Aug. 18, 1967). The California scheme goes much farther. Granted to well-behaved prisoners nearing the end of their terms, the family visits last 42 hours, take place in a former staff residence surrounded by elm trees and shrubs.

The house has two apartments, both with plenty of room to accommodate large families. Each apartment has three bedrooms, and each is equipped with a kitchen, food, linen and TV. There are no guards to interrupt the family’s privacy, and for the duration of the visit the prisoner is allowed to put away his convict’s uniform and wear his own clothes. Common law wives are not permitted so far, but the possibility is still under discussion. The intent of the program, explains Governor Ronald Reagan, is to “develop family strengths to sustain ex-inmates as they complete the transition from prison to a law-abiding society.”

They Went Ape. It is too early, of course, to measure the experiment’s results, but its effect on Tehachapi’s 1,320 inmates has been electric. “When this first came over the rumor wire, we couldn’t believe it,” says Fred Long, 25, who has been in and out of prison for the past nine years. “Then when the guys found out it was true, they just went ape. The bachelors were screaming, ‘I knew I should have got married, I knew it!’ One guy told me he was getting married as soon as he was out, so he could grab onto the program when he got thrown back in.”

Long, who lived in the duplex last week with his wife Diane, takes a much more sober view. “This thing will save a lot of marriages,” he says. “Just knowing this was coming up has helped mine. My wife and I didn’t know each other too well.” For Arzaga, the problem was only slightly different. After four years in prison, he said, “My kids, they hardly remembered me. They wouldn’t obey me. So I got mad. Later, my wife said they thought I was grouchy. I got to thinking about it, and maybe I was. I think it’ll be better next time. Out there in the house, you can let yourself relax. You learn things.”