Incarcerated individuals’ perspectives on contact and non-contact visits involving children and adults

Visits have many advantages for incarcerated individuals and their family members. However, the type of visit and its suitability for younger visitors may impair the benefits that the visit can provide. This study compares how contact visits (without a glass partition) and non-contact visits (with a partition) impact incarcerated individuals’ interactions with adult versus child visitors. One hundred twenty-two convicted incarcerated men from two maximum-security criminal prisons in Israel were administered an open-ended questionnaire 1–2 days after receiving a visit. Content analysis was used to explore individuals’ written responses to six open-ended questions about the visit, revealing five themes: the type of visit (contact or non-contact), glass partition, communication over the phone, physical contact and the duration of the visit. Incarcerated parents stressed the necessity of having contact visits for children’s wellbeing and emphasised the damage and distress experienced by children during non-contact visits. The frequency of mentioning these five themes is compared across prisoners who had contact versus non-contact visits as well as visits with versus without children. Policy implications for improving the conditions of visits, especially those involving young children, are discussed.