Practice Profile: Prison Visitation for Incarcerated Adults

Prison visitation allows incarcerated individuals the opportunity to meet with family and friends to sustain connections and social supports. One of the main goals of prison visitation is to reduce recidivism of individuals once they are released from incarceration. The practice is rated Promising for reducing recidivism of individuals who receive visits while incarcerated.

Practice Goals/Practice Components

Prison visitation, a longstanding feature of the U.S. prison system, allows incarcerated individuals the opportunity to meet with family and friends to help sustain connections and social supports. One of the main goals of prison visitation is to reduce recidivism of individuals once they are released from incarceration.

There are two primary types of prison visitation: 1) in-person, and 2) conjugal/furlough. In-person visits can take many forms, depending on the correctional facility, including face-to-face conversations through glass partitions or brief contact (i.e., no overnights) in an open visiting room. Conjugal/furlough visits allow individuals to spend an extended amount of time, usually overnight, with family members, and in mobile homes or other structures that are separate from the general prison population. However, only the following states presently offer conjugal or overnight visits: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Nebraska, New York, South Dakota, and Washington.

Prison visitation may also vary by correctional facility. For example, some prisons may use visitation as a privilege for good behavior or may have a strict screening process and criteria that are used to determine who is eligible to visit (for instance, a visitor can be disqualified from visiting if they provide false or inaccurate information, or if they have a criminal history).

Practice Theory

There are two theoretical perspectives that have been suggested to explain the relationship between prison visitation and successful reentry for adults: social bonds theory and strain theory. Social bonds theory posits that prison visitation can help maintain or strengthen positive social bonds through face-to-face interaction, which can help to prevent incarcerated individuals from engaging in further criminal behavior upon their release. Further, visitation can offer individuals the opportunity to preserve or restore relationships that were severed as a result of their incarceration (Mitchell, Spooner, and Zhang 2016; Mears et al. 2011).

With regard to strain theory, in-prison visitation may help individuals cope with the strain they feel both during and after incarceration. Visitations can reduce individuals’ feelings of frustration, anger, and hopelessness associated with the loss of their ties to families or friends (Mitchell, Spooner, and Zhang 2016; Mears et al. 2011).

Mitchell, Spooner, and Zhang (2016) included additional tests – called moderator analyses – to see if particular factors strengthened the impact of prison visitation on recidivism. Specifically, the moderator analyses looked at the impact of gender, visitation type, and follow-up period. 

With regard to gender, the largest statistically significant reduction in recidivism was found for studies that included only adult men, a smaller but statistically significant reduction in recidivism was found for studies that included both men and women, and no statistically significant reduction in recidivism was found for studies that included only women. This finding suggests that prison visitation is more effective for adult men, compared with adult women. It is important to note, however, that this finding should be interpreted with caution as only two studies included female-only samples. 

With regard to visitation type, there was a 36 percent reduction in recidivism found for studies that looked at conjugal visitation and furloughs, and a 25 percent reduction in recidivism for studies looking at in-person visitation (both results were statistically significant). Although it appears that conjugal/furlough visitation had a greater impact than in-person visitation, the authors noted that the studies were conducted over 20 years ago, and therefore the results should be interpreted with caution. 

Finally, there was a 53 percent reduction in recidivism found for studies on visitation with follow-up periods of less than 1 year and an 8 percent reduction in recidivism found for studies with follow-up periods of more than 1 year but less than 3 years. Both results were statistically significant. However, no statistically significant impact on recidivism was found for studies with follow-up periods of more than 3 years but less than 5 years—which indicates that the impact of prison visitation may decrease over time. It is important to note that this finding should also be interpreted with caution as only two studies had follow-up periods of more than 3 years.

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

These sources were used in the development of the practice profile:

Mears, Daniel P., Joshua Cochran, Sonja Siennick, and William Bales. 2012. “Prison Visitation and Recidivism.” Justice Quarterly 26(6):889–918.

Following are CrimeSolutions-rated programs that are related to this practice:

In-Prison Visitation (Florida)

Prison Visitation (Minnesota)

The Effects of Prison Video Visitation on Recidivism (Minnesota)

Why might a practice's outcome ratings differ from the ratings of specific programs encompassed by that practice?