Tightening corrections budgets, the lack of a legal right to in-person prison visitation, and the increasing availability of video visitation have led many prison and jail administrators to consider limiting opportunities for in-person visitation. This is concerning given the large literature which argues inmates receiving in-person visits are less likely to recidivate upon release. On the other hand, these studies have not determined whether this relationship is causal or is instead driven by the correlation between receiving visits and having a network of family and friends that can offer support upon release. In this article, I estimate the causal effect of in-person visitation on recidivism using unique, administrative data from the Iowa Department of Corrections. I find that visitation itself, as currently implemented in Iowa, has no impact on recidivism. Instead, my results suggest prison policies that create meaningful support networks available to prisoners upon release may yield significant benefits.

中文翻译：

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远离家乡和孤身一人：监狱探望对累犯的影响

更正的更正预算，缺乏对亲自进行监狱探视的合法权利，以及越来越多的视频探视，导致许多监狱和监狱管理人员考虑限制现场探视的机会。考虑到大量文献认为接受亲身探视的囚犯在释放后再犯的可能性较小，这令人担忧。另一方面，这些研究还没有确定这种关系是因果关系还是相反，是由接待访问与拥有可以在释放后提供支持的家人和朋友网络之间的相关性驱动的。在本文中，我使用爱荷华州惩教署的独特行政数据估算了亲自探视对累犯的因果关系。我发现爱荷华州目前实施的访问本身 对累犯没有影响。相反，我的研究结果表明，监狱政策可以为囚犯释放后建立有意义的支持网络，从而产生巨大的收益。