Let's make our prisons even more of a holiday camp

[mids]

I'm really hoping this article is just a piss-take. It must be mustn't it? Surely the point of going to prison is that you forego your freedom and all that goes along with it? Surely the right to family life must also include the responsibility that goes along with it? In fact, isn't responsibility the main point about having a family, not that you should have the right to it?

"Facilities must be provided to enable UK prisoners to enjoy conjugal visits," a landmark European court ruling concluded this week. By forbidding "sexual relations" between prisoners and their visitors, the court decided that the British government was in breach of article eight of the Human Rights Act: the right to family and private life.

Of course there has been no such ruling – yet. But following the successful appeal to the Strasbourg court by six prisoners who argued that under article eight of the act they should be allowed to provide sperm to their partners to enable them to become fathers, surely it is only a matter of time.

www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/feb/11/prisonsandprobation-sexual-health

[dwad]

I'm pretty pant-wettingly liberal when it comes to the treatment of prisoners but this just takes the piss. There's even a blog on CiF about the nightmare of sexual frustration in prisons. There is a large part of me that thinks prison is the ideal place to learn a little self-control which if you'd had a little earlier would have prevented your being there in the first place.

And of course while battles over IVF rage outside we are now considering whether absent mass-murdering fathers are suitable for treatment - er, no.

[VikingHumpingWitch]

More or less what dwad said.

I think there's a strong case for "the right to family life" being removed from the Human Rights Act. I don't think you have a right to children merely on the grounds that you are biologically capable of producing them.

[flatandy]

Yeah. What those two said.

I'm all in favour of of the guests at our prisons having comfy double beds and decent power showers in their en-suite bathrooms, and a good quality meal 3 times a day, and so on.

But I'm really not sure that rumpy-pumpy, even via the medium of the syringe, is entirely approriate.

[policecar]

<shakes head>