Purpose Scholarship suggests that prison visitation is important because it allows inmates
access to social ties that, in turn, can offset social isolation and help inmates cope with the
transition back into society upon release. Only a small number of empirical assessments of
visitation exist, however, and existing studies have typically overlooked how the
heterogeneity inherent in visitation may influence whether visitation is beneficial, harmful, or
has no effect. The goal of this paper is to develop a conceptual framework for theorizing this …