Assessing the impact of visitation on inmate misconduct within a county jail

Although state and federal prison populations are larger than jails, the annual number of individuals moving through America’s jails far exceeds those passing through its prisons. Jail inmates arguably experience many of the same pains of imprisonment as prison inmates (see Sykes in The society of captives: a study of a maximum security prison, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1958). Inability to adjust to these deprivations can influence inmate misconduct, and visitation has been shown to reduce imprisonment pains and reduce inmate misconduct within prison populations, but no identified studies have examined the impact of visitation on misconduct within a jail. This population warrants further analysis and this research hopes to fill this gap by exploring whether visitation significantly influences inmate misconduct within a jail population. The results indicated that visitation did not influence minor infractions but did significantly influence inmate participation in incidences of serious misconduct. Implications for theory, research, and policy are further discussed.