ASSESSMENT OF MARITAL VISITATION CHALLENGES OF MARRIED COUPLES DURING IMPRISONMENT AT SODO CORRECTIONAL CENTRE, WOLAITA ZONE, SOUTHERN ETHIOPIA

Correctional centers are admitting prisoners with reformative and rehabilitative services to make attitudinal and behavioral changes. Nevertheless, the rising number of prisoners makes correctional centers the place to learn more sophisticated crimes and prisons as industrial complexes. In visitation programs, the role of spouses is essential to maintaining marital relationships among prisoners and their spouses. However, very little research has been conducted on the challenges of imprisoned married couples during marital visitation. This study was aimed to assessmarital visitation challenges of married couples during imprisonment at Sodo correctional center. The study employed mixed research methods. The research employed cross-sectional and case study research designs. Thus, the research employed purposive and simple random sampling techniques for data collection. The collected data was analyzed using both qualitative and quantitative methods. The research found prisoners were emotional satisfied from marital visitations which continue and strengthening marital relationship during imprisonment. The pattern of frequency of visitation shows that the mostly visited prisoners by their spouses had high emotional attachments. But, marital visitation was continuously encountered by various problems, such as a lack of space for mass visitation, the absence of a private room for marital visitation, overcrowding of visitors, less time given for visitation, and lack of privacy to discuss marital issues, which hampered the effectiveness of visitation programs. Therefore, the limitations of the visitation procedure necessitate a high level of commitment from the concerned body, unless the prison system will continue to be the source of social dysfunction.