Inmates’ Experiences with Prison Visitation

Abstract

Prison visitation is an important tool used to strengthen inmates’ social ties and incentivize good behavior in prison. Nevertheless, prison visits do not always go well for inmates, and we know little about why that is. Accordingly, in the current study we examined inmates’ varied experiences with prison visitation. We used data collected from 228 visited inmates who reported on 701 of their adult visitors, and identified whether visits typically made inmates feel guilty, stressed, sad, loved, comforted, and/or supported, and if inmates often argued with their visitors. Results from multilevel models indicated marked variability in inmates’ experiences with visitation, shaped by: who visits, how often they visit, inmates’ pre-prison behaviors, prison life, and demographic factors. These findings suggest that resources for conflict resolution may be needed during visitation, and that family-centric correctional interventions that recognize the variation we have uncovered here might hold promise in maximizing the effectiveness of visitation.

Keywords:

• prison visitation
• incarceration
• inmates

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Nancy Rodriguez and Travis Pratt for their extremely helpful comments on earlier drafts, as well as Megan Kurlychek for her advice and guidance throughout the review process. We also extend a big thanks to the rest of Team Prison (Kevin Wright, Clair White, Laura Beckman, Andrea Borrego, Chantal Fahmy, Travis Meyers, and Arynn Infante) who helped collect the data we used for this study.

Notes

¹ Interviews were conducted in a total of six units (one minimum-, one medium-, and one maximum-security unit in one male prison complex, and one minimum-, one medium-, and one maximum-security unit in one female prison complex). With respect to the geographic location of these complexes, the majority of Arizona’s population resides in two urban centers: Phoenix and Tucson. The male prison complex is located 75 miles from both cities. The sole female prison complex in the state is located 30 miles from Phoenix and 150 miles from Tucson. Lengthy distances between prison and home can pose challenges for many visitors. Our data are not able to account for how far each visitor has to travel to get to prison.

² Potential visitors to ADC must submit an application, pass a criminal background check, and pay a one-time $25 processing fee. The visitation approval process can eliminate potential visitors for a variety of reasons (e.g. for having a criminal record, a lack of required identification, or no legal residency status). Visitors can only be on the list of one inmate at a time, unless more than one immediate family member is incarcerated in ADC (2012).

³ Among the 262 inmates approached, only 12 men and 19 women declined to take part in the study. This resulted in a cooperation rate of 88.2% (231/262). Inmates who refused to participate in the study did not differ from those who participated in terms of their sex, race, age, sentence length, offense type, or security classification. Inmates were not asked to provide a reason for declining to participate in the study.

⁴ Interviews were carried out while an inmate and an interviewer sat together at a table or desk. Maximum-security inmates who were not eligible for contact visits were interviewed behind glass, per ADC safety and security protocols.

⁵ We used the mi suite for multiple imputation with chained equations available in Stata 14 (StataCorp, 2015). This involved a procedure in which 5 imputed data sets were generated by a missingness equation that included all variables in the present study (Schafer, 1997; White, Royston, & Wood, 2011). Pooled parameter estimates were calculated using mi estimate (Rubin, 1987). Our key findings were the same in models that used listwise deletion. Prior to imputation, we found no evidence that the data were systematically missing (Little, 1988).

⁶ More specifically, inmates were asked: “Do you have arguments with [visitor 1] during visits?”; “In general, do visits with [visitor 1] make you feel stressed?”; “In general, do visits with [visitor 1] make you feel guilty?”; “In general, do visits with [visitor 1] make you feel sad?”; “In general, do visits with [visitor 1] make you feel comforted?”; “In general, do visits with [visitor 1] make you feel loved?”; and “In general, do visits with [visitor 1] make you feel supported?” These questions were then repeated for each of the recent adult visitors that were identified (up to 5 visitors). Inmates indicated their responses to each question by simply stating “yes” or “no.”

⁷ The survey did not capture inmates’ experiences with each of their child visitors, and it is unknown whether children accompanied any of the focal adult visitors to prison. Even so, in supplemental analyses, we restricted the sample to inmates with minor children to determine (1) whether inmates who ever received visits from their children were more or less likely to have particular experiences with their adult visitors, and (2) whether the frequency of children’s visits shaped inmates’ experiences with their visitors. Variables for whether inmates ever received visits from one or more of their children (1 = yes, 0 = no) and how often they received visits from children (ranging from 1 “never” to 6 “weekly”) were measured at the inmate level (level 2). The results of these analyses indicated that visits from children were not related to any of our dependent variables, nor were the frequency of child visits. Note that 70% of parents reported having received at least one visit from their minor children.

⁸ Common benchmarks in factor analysis are that factor loadings should typically exceed .40, and that the eigenvalue should be above 1.0 (Morgan, Gliner, & Harmon, 2006).

⁹ The depressive scale is the only indicator of psychological symptoms available in the data. We acknowledge that depression is only one of many psychological challenges commonly experienced by the incarcerated population. It would be useful for future research to consider whether other psychological states documented among prisoners, such as anxiety, loneliness, and mania, also shape inmates’ visitation experiences (Brown & Day, 2008; James & Glaze, 2006).

¹⁰ With several different dependent variables, the problem of “multiple comparisons” can arise. As the number of statistical tests increases, the likelihood of Type 1 Error increases as well. In supplemental analyses, we used Benjamini and Hochberg’s (1995) false discovery rate (FDR) to adjust for multiple comparisons. All coefficients in Tables 3 and 4 with a p value of .02 or less were robust to the FDR correction (α = .05). Although the FDR estimator can sometimes be conservative in social science research (see Gelman, Hill, & Yajima, 2012), coefficients in Tables 2 and 3 with p values greater than .02 (and z values less than |2.05|) should be interpreted more cautiously.

¹¹ Table 4 presents some additional model-fit diagnostics. The latent class probabilities refer to the relative size of each class; and the posterior probabilities refer to the likelihood of class membership for each observation. A rule of thumb is that each class should have an average posterior probability (AvePP) of .70 or higher (Nagin, 2005). Each of the classes we identified had an AvePP of at least .96, which confirms the adequacy of the model.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jillian J. Turanovic

Jillian J. Turanovic is an assistant professor in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University. Her research focuses on victimization, criminological theory, correctional policy, and the consequences of incarceration.

Melinda Tasca

Melinda Tasca is an assistant professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Sam Houston State University. Her research focuses on correctional policy, the consequences of incarceration, and race/ethnicity, gender, and crime.