7. Contact with the outside world Due to the limited number of establishments where women can serve their sentences, they are often located far away from their homes, which impacts negatively on contacts with their families and friends.64  In principle, all prisoners should be given the opportunity to maintain their relationships with their family and friends, and especially with their spouses or partners and children. The continuation of such relations can be of critical importance for all concerned, particularly in the context of prisoners’ social rehabilitation. The guiding principle should be to promote contact with the outside world as often as possible.65  For example, open visits, allowing physical contact with friends and especially children and partners, should be the norm. A decision to impose closed visits should always be wellfounded and reasoned, and based on an individual assessment of potential risks.66 Women in prison should be offered the possibility of conjugal visits on an equal footing with men.67 It is also important that visits with spouses or partners or other close relatives be made possible even where such persons are also imprisoned, be it in the same or another establishment.68  A high percentage of women in prison are mothers and the primary caretakers in the family. Separation from families and children can have a particularly detrimental effect on both the prisoners and their families, particularly their children.69 In view of the critical importance of maintaining family relationships for women in prison, contact with their families, including their children, and their children’s guardians and legal representatives, should be encouraged and facilitated by all reasonable means.70 Visiting hours should, in particular, allow for contact with school-age children or working relatives who might accompany them.71 Women prisoners could be permitted to receive longer if less frequent visits, by accumulating visiting time allowances.72 Financial assistance might, for example, be provided to those women in prison who do not have the necessary means to maintain regular contact with their dependent children.73 Sweden: 1991 visit, paragraphs 109 and 110; Ireland: 2014 visit, paragraph 109. Georgia: 2012 visit, paragraph 56. 66 Bosnia and Herzegovina: 2012 visit, paragraph 53; Portugal: 2008 visit, paragraph 99; Romania: 2014 visit, paragraph 103. 67 Slovenia: 2006 visit, paragraph 87. 68 France (Reunion): 2004 visit, paragraph 53; Romania: 2014 visit, paragraph 105. 69 Ireland: 2014 visit, paragraph 109. 70 Ibid., paragraph 110. See also Rule 26 of the “Bangkok Rules”. 71 United Kingdom (Gibraltar): 2014 visit, paragraph 56. 72 Armenia: 2015 visit, paragraph 107. 73 Ireland: 2014 visit, paragraph 110. 64 65 8