Israel’s High Court, in a landmark decision this week, urged that prisoners be allowed to have sexual relations on a regular basis with their wives, or, in the view of one justice, with their women friends if they are unmarried.
Present laws and regulations forbid this. As a result, a three-justice bench of the High Court ruled Sunday that it must deny convict Chaim Weill’s application to be allowed conjugal rights.
But Justices Menachem Eilon, Dov Levin and Aharon Barak urged the legislature to change the law and permit conjugal rights, which, in Eilon’s words, are fundamental to human dignity. He suggested a monthly meeting between convict and spouse either at home or in special prison facilities.
Eilon, who is religious, said the ban on such rights promoted homosexuality in jails. Barak, concurring, urged that the right apply to all prisoners, whether married or single.
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