Prisoners of Love

"This," quipped the Ketchikan Republican Club last week, "is the legislature of bingo, booze and boudoirs."

But Alaska's Democratic legislature was somewhat preoccupied with a superficial study of the three Bs principally because it is a fledgling state facing real frontier problems. The "bingo" dealt with a lottery bill (passed) designed to legalize the beloved Alaska tradition of betting on the exact day, hour and minute of the ice breakup on the Tanana and certain other rivers. The booze bill (soon to become law) requires saloons to close down each day between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m.. instead of 3 a.m. to 5 a.m. weekdays. The boudoir bit was altogether something different. Passed last week by the legislature, and ready for Governor William Egan's signature, was an act that entitles honor prisoners in the state prison to take seven-day furloughs, once every six months, to visit their homes and families at their own expense.

As originally written by Democratic Representative John Simon Hellenthal, 45, of Anchorage, the bill would have allowed prisoners' wives to visit their husbands at the prison in privacy. This periodical togetherness, declared Hellenthal, would help rehabilitate prisoners, preserve families, cut down on the incidence of homosexuality in prisons.-For fear of making Alaska "the laughing stock of every two-bit master of ceremonies," as .one senator put it, and to save the cost of constructing private facilities at the prisons, the state senate rewrote Hellenthal's bill to permit the prisoners to go home.

Alaskans dubbed the new privilege "Hellenthal's Honeymoon," and during the debate Hellenthal's colleagues in the lower house solemnly prepared a resolution noting that he had been in the state capital for six weeks, commending him for his "remarkable appreciation for the importance of togetherness," and granting him permission to head home to Anchorage for the weekend.

*In the U.S., conjugal visits are permitted only in Mississippi, where prisoners and their wives (or common-law wives) are allowed the privileges of special cottages at the state penitentiary every Sunday.

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