IONE — Two women were killed during conjugal visits with their incarcerated partners inside Mule Creek State Prison months apart last year, sparking questions about safety, rehabilitation, and justice.
Tania Thomas, 47, arrived at Mule Creek State Prison on June 28, 2024, for a four-day, three-night conjugal visit with her partner, Anthony Curry. Curry is serving a life sentence for attempted murder and carjacking.
Thomas was last seen alive, according to the coroner's report, at 8 p.m. on the third night when she was escorted to the visitation center to take her nightly medication. This was the last time she was seen and Curry is believed to be the last person to see her alive.
By 6:30 a.m., Curry called the correctional staff via an intercom in the two-bedroom one bathroom visiting unit, notifying them that Thomas was having a medical emergency.
Thomas was pronounced dead on July 1, 2024. This information wasn't known publicly until months later, after another woman on a conjugal visit with her partner was killed.
In November 2024, Stephanie Dowells arrived at Mule Creek State Prison for a conjugal visit with her husband, David Brinson, who was serving life without the possibility of parole for killing four men in 1993.
Around 2 a.m. during her visit, Brinson used a phone in the family visit unit to notify CDCR officers that Dowells had passed out. Within the hour, she was pronounced dead after the prison's fire department attempted life-saving measures.
Still, Dowells' death would not become public until March 2025, when it was confirmed that she was strangled and the cause of death was considered homicide.
Since both deaths became public, CBS Sacramento has been getting answers about the state's family visit program, its history, and why the state is one of only four that allow these visits. Both families have shared their outrage and concern, calling on the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation to pause family visits until they can figure out how to keep visitors safe.
Family visits, also known as conjugal visits, are private, extended visits typically held in apartment-style units on prison grounds. These visits allow inmates to spend time with loved ones, including spouses and children, away from the general prison population and without constant supervision.
The visits can last anywhere from 30 to 40 hours and are restricted to immediate family members including parents, children, siblings, legal spouses, and registered domestic partners.
Inmates must apply for the visit and they are granted for good behavior as well as other "strict eligibility requirements."
Inmates excluded from these visits include those on Death Row, any incarcerated person with convictions for sex offenses, anyone in the Reception Centers process, or anyone under disciplinary restrictions.
California is one of only four states – along with Connecticut, New York, and Washington — that still allow such visits.
Historical and legal background of conjugal visits
Old Camp Nine at the Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman Farm. Mississippi Department of CorrectionsFamily visitation programs in the United States has controversial origins.
The first informal version of the program was at Mississippi State Penitentiary, Parchman Farm. Prostitutes would be brought in to have sex with black inmates as a "means of control" according to Blake Feldman with the Southern Center for Human Rights.
"Parchment Farm had this, and it was based on completely racist premises, that black people don't have self-control, don't have morals, they're somewhat less than us. So this...giving them this primal opportunity to have sex with prostitutes or visit with their loved ones would up productivity of Parchman Farm. So, it's really disgusting origins," Feldman said.
The program, in this unofficial form, received bad press nationally, according to Feldman, and Parchman Farm ultimately rebranded the incentive as progressive.
The first Governor to comment on the potential of a similar program: California's Ronald Reagan, who, in 1968, suggested the state adopt a pilot family visitation program.
In its original form, the program was open to inmates who were nearing release, to meet with family members to begin the process of reacclimating to the world outside of incarceration.
"In California, it was more of the conservative rhetoric was this will reduce this crisis of homosexuality in prisons. So, like conservative values. They wanted to decrease the prevalence of homosexuality. And they wanted to like bolster core nuclear family values," Feldman said. "So it was like the man is the man of the house. If he's incarcerated... We have to maintain this patriarchy and these family values is very heteronormative mission. But then, of course, progressives also liked it, because this was when a lot of people were starting to understand prison should be rehabilitative."
Feldman said Mississippi and California were considered leaders in this realm.
Family visitation programs spread across the country to nearly 20 states at its peak, but by the early 2000's most states ended their programs citing costs.
Mississippi, the first state to offer family visitation, was one of the last to end its program in 2014. At the time, the Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said he was ending the privilege due to "budgetary reasons" and the number of babies being born as a result of conjugal visits.
"Then, even though we provide contraception, we have no idea how many women are getting pregnant only for the child to be raised by one parent," said Epps in a 2014 news release.
Out of 22,000 inmates in Mississippi at the time, Epps said that only 155 inmates were eligible for the visits.
As other programs ended, California's has remained, as Feldman explains, because of the benefits for inmates after release and during their incarceration.
"California started maybe late sixties in like a pilot program, and then, like early seventies, it was expanded because it was a huge success. It was very limited to people who are months from release. It started in California as this process for transitioning. It was expanded because of all these other benefits," Feldman said.
The CDCR has not yet confirmed how many inmates are eligible for family visits in California with CBS Sacramento after requests for the data.
Proponents of family visits, including CDCR, say the visits are designed to support positive family connections and successful rehabilitation.
Extended family visitation, according to experts, gives inmates preparation ahead of their release.
"It really is determined in the states where they exist, that the benefits far outweigh the risks, although with the story we're now discussing clearly there were risks, and there are people who are in prison because they are violent, they have committed crimes, they have been problematic in terms of our society," said Jorga Leap, ajunct professor of social welfare at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.
Leap says that the visits can impact incarcerated life and the environment inside prisons positively. She explains that even if inmates are serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, family visits can help the prison environment be calmer and less violent.
"We sadly have people who are incarcerated and we have the people that are there trying to maintain, trying to control, trying to keep order, who need not to be abusive, who need not to be punitive, but to be as humane as possible as well. So it serves both sides," Leap said.
The opportunity to receive a family visit can also reduce sexual violence within men's prisons, Leap says, due to the frequency of prison rape. Leap said:
"So, let's talk about a peaceful prison environment, a settled prison environment, a prison environment where there is not sexual violence, brutality, any of the things that are so dangerous. And, by the way, if you're not caring about the prisoner, care about everybody surrounding them, and the fact that there can be harm, there can be injuries, there can be wrongful death. And when we're talking about the State of California who gets sued for all that? Who's on the line? It becomes a state liability issue as well."
The visits can help incarcerated people maintain their family ties, family connections, which Leap says have proven to reduce the chances of inmates reoffending.
"It does have risks. And we're witnessing one of these risks, and they have to be weighed. The people who are allowed conjugal visits have to be evaluated carefully. There is a movement away from evaluating people who are violent and saying, Yeah, okay, let's have a conjugal visit. But, on the other hand, if someone is violent and it's going to help them calm down. It's really a difficult decision to make," Leap said.
The CDCR temporarily initiated what they call a "modified program" in March, pausing family visitations in prisons like Mule Creek, in response to a surge in violence against both staff and inmates.
In May, the visits were paused again at Mule Creek and were reopened last week, according to a CDCR spokesperson.
Neither of these modified programs were a result of the visitor deaths at Mule Creek last year.
Program status and future considerations
Despite the policy's reinstatement, the families of the victims are urging CDCR to pause the program again, this time in direct response to the deaths of their loved ones.
"We need to get these stories out. We need these policies and procedures changed urgently, because there could be visitors up there right now that are about to die," said Jeanine Rojo, Thomas' cousin and the family's spokesperson.
Rojo told CBS Sacramento she was concerned about the mental status of her cousin's partner, Curry, at the time of their visit and believes CDCR should be held responsible for allowing the visit to continue as planned.
Republican Assemblymember David Tangipa represents Assembly District 8, which includes parts of the Central Valley, Calaveras and Tuolumne Counties. He says he agrees with both families' calls for change and spoke extensively with CBS Sacramento about his plans to introduce legislation to, potentially, end the program altogether.
"I just find it so crazy that we just went about our day. There are two women that are strangled to death within the same year, at the same prison, with no action behind it," Tangipa said.
Tangipa says he is in the early stages of information gathering to find out more about the family visits in California and what, if any, changes can be made through legislation that would make the visits safer.
"Whether it's the unsupervised portion of it and where we can be effective and actually change the law, to make sure there isn't another woman, or another individual, or any family that's potentially going to be in the same situations," Tangipa told CBS Sacramento.
He said he has been speaking with other lawmakers to see if they can create a coalition to better inform legislation about the family visits. In these early stages, he said he has spoken with individuals who have shared about the processes related to conjugal visits.
"It kind of feels like date night in prison. That a lot of the taxpayers actually pay for," said Tangipa, "I found out that guards actually go to Target, pick up date night, grab condoms, food snacks [for the inmates]."
The CDCR has not confirmed the details of these trips with CBS Sacramento or the costs of the visits to the state or taxpayers.
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