He's supposed to be in deep time out — durance vile as we used to call it — where pleasures, comforts and rights are severely limited. And it's galling to think of the state assisting in such a joyful ritual while the victim, forever denied all joys, lies dead. The thought was sickening enough that Justin Boulay, 33, was released from Danville Correctional Center Tuesday less than 13 years after he strangled his ex-girlfriend, Andrea Faye Will. That he'd gotten married while incarcerated and was headed off to join his wife — who lives in the island paradise of Hawaii, no less — seemed only to deepen the affront to justice. Further, prison weddings don't create the sort of social, economic and sexual unions typically associated with marriage, given that inmates are all but unable to fill the social, economic, sexual and other roles of a spouse.

That's why some states used to forbid or discourage weddings behind bars. But in the 1987 case of Turner v. Safley , the U.S. Supreme Court tossed out a Missouri regulation that permitted inmates to marry only if prison officials found a "compelling reason" to allow it.The opinion, written by Sandra Day O'Connor, noted that "the decision to marry is a fundamental right" not inconsistent "with the legitimate penological objectives of the corrections system."

Marriages, O'Connor wrote, "are expressions of emotional support and public commitment" that may also be "an exercise of religious faith" and are often "a precondition to the receipt of government benefits (e.g., Social Security benefits), property rights (e.g., tenancy by the entirety, inheritance rights), and other, less tangible benefits (e.g., legitimation of children born out of wedlock)."



However, the court did not strike down marriage bans on inmates serving life sentences. And in Illinois, corrections officials say prisoners on death row (there are 15) are unable to marry due to a prohibition enforced by Livingston County, which has jurisdiction over Pontiac Correctional Center where condemned prisoners are housed.



When prisoners are scheduled to be released back into society, there's also a practical reason to allow them to marry. The Impact of Marital and Relationship Status on Social Outcomes for Returning Prisoners, a 2009 study of 650 male ex-prisoners conducted by the Justice Policy Center of the Urban Institute on behalf of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services found that those who were married or in marriagelike relationships were 12 percent less likely to commit new crimes during their first eight months of freedom than those who were single.



Which makes sense. Family ties, personal bonds, can give a person the incentive and the structure to stabilize his life.



In other words, given that appallingly lenient sentencing guidelines dictated Justin Boulay was eligible for release this week, isn't it better for the public that he has the additional support and motivation to behave provided by marriage?



I grudgingly concede that it is, even though the often-repeated statistic is that nearly nine out of 10 prison marriages fail after the inmate is released. There is much, much more to marriage than legitimizing sex. At its best, it benefits all of society by strengthening the personal bonds that make our communities stronger, safer and more productive.



Which brings me, at last, to another topic in this week's news — pending legislation in the Illinois General Assembly to allow same-sex couples to form marriagelike civil unions (Senate Bill 1716).



The petty reason some cite in opposition to such unions — they cannot naturally produce offspring! — is piddling compared with the limitations of the prison-based unions that we've recognized as a beneficial and "fundamental right" for 23 years.



Giving gays and lesbians the right to form civil unions is not only good for them —- affording them the protections and comforts of legally recognized commitments — but good for all of us. Polls show ever increasing majorities supporting this basic reform in the face of the shrinking opposition of bigots.



After years of delay, legislators will likely be voting on this proposal next week. Approving it will be the fair and smart thing to do.

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Quote from Geoffrey R. Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago in an August 8, 2010 Tribune op. ed:

As the Supreme Court has long recognized, "marriage is one of the basic civil rights of man." Indeed, the court has held unconstitutional laws prohibiting individuals who are delinquent in their child support payments from marrying and even laws forbidding prison inmates from marrying. Along similar lines, imagine a law forbidding psychiatrists from marrying, because their marriages are especially likely to end in divorce, or a law prohibiting marriages between persons of different Christian denominations, because those marriages are also especially likely to end in divorce. How quick would we be to say that such laws do not impair "one of the basic civil rights of man"?