Time was when Mississippi’s initiative adopted in the early 20th Century to allow conjugal visits for married inmates was considered progressive and innovative.

Does anybody remember studying this in Mississippi History and Civics?

The textbook that I studied lifted out conjugal visits for married state inmates as a significant, positive fact about the state that students should learn. Right up there with Mississippi being the leading producer of tung oil from tung trees.

Now, effective Feb. 1, Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps will end conjugal visits, citing expense, etc. His administrative action accomplishes what State Representative Richard Bennett (R-Harrison County) has been trying do with legislation.

Epps cited the expense of operating the program and minimum participation. He said that only 155 of the state’s 22,000 inmates are eligible to participate.

Another likely motive on Epps’ mind was taking the subject off the table. He didn’t want to get mired down with legislators in the particulars of conjugal visits when he’s trying to get reforms from the legislature. Mississippi is headed toward a $30 million deficit in its $340 million fiscal 2013 prison budget. Epps is hammering home the need to incarcerate fewer prisoners.

“The only way of reducing Mississippi’s prison population growth while protecting public safety is by diverting a greater number of low-risk offenders from prisons, reducing the time that low-risk offenders are in prisons, or a combination of both,” Epps states in a Jan. 10 news release.

Inmate Roy Harper offered his own suggestions in a letter published in Friday’s edition.

“Take what law you were sentenced under and how much time you serve out of the equation and review everyone’s file,” Harper writes. His point is that prisoners who have already served many years under long sentences and who have good records of behavior are also good risk for early release.

“Everyone can’t be in prison for life,” Harper wrote, observing accurately that today’s problems with prison overcrowding are rooted in years of mandatory “tough-on-crime” laws that include mandatory sentences with no possibility of parole or early release.

That’s not promoting a “soft-on-crime” approach either. It’s just the idea that different people respond to incarceration differently. Some may be likely recidivists while others, if they see a chance for early release, will work to earn. Leaving that decision to judges, parole and prison officials will give them another tool to encourage rehabilitation.

(Meanwhile, Florida now considers the tung tree a Category II invasive species.)