All in the Family: An Examination of the Predictors of Visitation Among Committed Juvenile Offenders

• DOI: 10.1177/1541204019857123
• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Author: Brae Campion Young,Carter Hay
• Date: 01 January 2020
• Subject Matter: Articles

Article

All in the Family:

An Examination of the

Predictors of Visitation Among

Committed Juvenile Offenders

Brae Campion Young

1

and Carter Hay

1

Abstract

Scholarship highlights the importance of visitation in improving the lives of prisoners across

numerous domains including mental health, adjustment to confinement, and postrelease success.

Although research on adult inmates has examined factors that predict visitation, no such study exists

for juvenile offenders. Moreover, because this existing research has relied largely on administrative

data, no study has examined how family and social contexts affect visitation. Using data collected

on 2,345 youth who completed residential placement in Florida, the current study examined

how qualities and histories of offenders and their families affect the likelihood, consistency, and

sequencing of visits for juvenile offenders. The results suggest that youth’s demographics and

offending histories, as well as their family backgrounds and relationships, affect visitation. Directions

for future research and implications for policy and practice are discussed.

Keywords

visitation, prison visitation, social support, family support, juvenile justice

Incarceration can be a stressful and isolating experience for offenders, but a growing body of

literature highlights the importance of social ties—including visitation during confinement—for

reducing isolation and improving behavioral outcomes (Bales & Mears, 2008; Berg & Huebner,

2011; Cochran, 2014; Mears, Cochran, Siennick, & Bales, 2012). Visits offer offenders an oppor-

tunity for interaction and companionship with those outside the institution, and these interactions

may minimize the pains of imprisonment and prov ide inmates access to prosocial support and

control (Agnew, 2006; Bales & Mears, 2008; Brunton-Smith & McCarthy, 2017; La Vigne, Naser,

Brooks, & Castro, 2005). As a result, offenders who maintain contact with family and friends tend to

fare better during confinement and after release. Indeed, visits are associated with reduced mis-

conduct (Borgman, 1985; Cochran, 2012; Siennick, Mears, & Bales, 2013), improved mental health

1

College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA

Corresponding Author:

Brae Campion Young, College of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Florida State University, 112 S. Copeland St., Tallahassee,

FL 32306, USA.

Email: bcampion@fsu.edu

Youth Violence and JuvenileJustice

2020, Vol. 18(1) 54-77

ªThe Author(s) 2019

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DOI: 10.1177/1541204019857123

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functioning (De Claire & Dixon, 2017; Monahan, Goldweber, & Cauffman, 2011; Wallace et al.,

2016), and lower recidivism (Bales & Mears, 2008; Mears et al., 2012; Ryan & Yang, 2005).

Although visits may be beneficial, prior research reveals substantial variation in their prevalence

across offenders. Between 25%and 75%of offenders (both juvenile and adult) will never receive a

visit (Bales & Mears, 2008; Cochran, Barnes, Mears, & Bales, 2018; Young, Nadel, Bales, Pesta, &

Greenwald, 2019), and among those receiving visits, some receive many while others receive few

(Turanovic & Tasca, 2017). Also, scholarship on adult inmates reveals key offender characteristics

and background variables that predict visitation—more visits are received by offenders who are

younger, White, female, and who are housed closer to home (Cochran, Mears, & Bales, 2017;

Cochran, Mears, Bales, & Stewart, 2016; Connor & Tewksbury, 2015; Tewksbury & Connor,

2012). In short, these studies suggest that visitation is not equally distributed and the factors that

limit visitation are identifiable.

It bears emphasizing, however, that visitation research has focused largely on adult offenders. No

study has examined which factors predic t visitation among committed juveniles . This is a key

oversight considering the rising importance of juvenile reentry in particular (Baglivio, Wolff,

Jackowski, & Greenwald, 2017; Mears & Travis, 2004). Nearly 100,000 juvenile offenders exit

residential facilities each year, and their reoffending rates often match or exceed those observed

among adult offenders (Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2011; Snyder, 2004). Moreover, key things that

distinguish juvenile confinement—shorter lengths of stay, a rehabilitative focus, and the legally

dependent status of offenders—could lead to different patterns and predictors of visitation. These

circumstances and possibilities give priority to research that examines visitation among juvenile

offenders, including the factors that predict its occurrence. Such research can yield new theoretical

insights on what explains exposure to a key protective factor (visits) that can promote successful

reintegration upon release. Moreover, from a pragmatic standpoint, understanding the predictors of

visitation among juveniles can provide juvenile justice administrators with information on which

factors affect the likelihood of visitation. Such information in turn can be used to promote visitation

in ways that encourage better youth outcomes including lower misconduct during confinement and

lower reoffending upon release.

The goal of the current study therefore is to contribute to the existing literature by examining the

predictors of visitation among committed juvenile offenders. Underlying our approach is the pre-

mise that visitation must be understood as a social event that arises from the prior history and

qualities of youth and their families. Thus, consistent with prior literature, the analysis first examines

how individual qualities of youth—including their age, sex, race/ethnicity, and prior offending—are

associated with visitation (Cochran et al., 2016; Cochran et al., 2017; Clark & Duwe, 2016; Connor

& Tewksbury, 2015; Tewksbury & Connor, 2012). However, we also consider the effects of family

structural and background characteristics, given that structural disadvantages at the family level may

pose obstacles to visitation. As part of this, we examine how visits are affected by such things as

family income, single-parent family status, the presence of siblings, family history of incarceration,

and the geographic distance between the family and the youth’s residential facility. And last, in a

departure from most prior studies (Cochran et al., 2016; Cochran et al., 2017; Clark & Duwe, 2016;

Connor & Tewksbury, 2015; Tewksbury & Connor, 2012), we examine the effect of key family

social process variables—including family closeness, support, and conflict—on visitation with the

expectation that youth from families marked by more troubled relationships will receive fewer visits.

These considerations are explored using data collected from 2,345 juveniles who completed a

residential placement in Florida in 2015–2016. These data are well suited for advancing knowledge

on juvenile offender visitation. The data come from a large and diverse sample of confined offenders

from all residential facilities in the state, and the data contain repeated measures of visitation during

the residential stay. This enables measures not just of whether or not an offender was visited, but

also, how consistently those visits occurred across the residential stay. Also, the data contain a wide

Young and Hay 55