Joshua C. Cochran

Prison Visitation and Recidivism

Scholars and policymakers have called for greater attention to understanding the causes of and solutions to improved prisoner reentry outcomes, resulting in renewed attention to a factor—prison visitation—long believed to reduce recidivism. However, despite the theoretical arguments advanced on its behalf and increased calls for evidence-based policy, there remains little credible empirical research on whether a beneficial relationship between visitation and recidivism in fact exists. Against that backdrop, this study employs propensity score matching analyses to examine whether visitation of various types and in varying amounts, or “doses,” is in fact negatively associated with recidivism outcomes among a cohort of released prisoners. The analyses suggest that visitation has a small to modest effect in reducing recidivism of all types, especially property offending, and that the effects may be most pronounced for spouse or significant other visitation. We discuss the implications of the findings for research and policy.

Breaches in the Wall Imprisonment, Social Support, and Recidivism

Objectives: Drawing on theories that emphasize the salience of social ties, this study examines the different kinds of experiences prisoners have with visitation and the implications of those experiences for behavior after release. Method: This study uses data from a release cohort of prisoners to (1) explore how visitation experiences unfold for different cohorts of individuals serving different amounts of time in prison and to (2) test the effects of longitudinal visitation patterns on recidivism. Results: Findings suggest that individuals who maintain connections with their social networks outside of prison have lower rates of reoffending and that the timing and consistency with which visitation occurs also affect criminal behavior. Specifically, prisoners who are visited early and who experience a sustained pattern of visitation are less likely to recidivate. Conclusion: These findings underscore the importance of social ties for understanding the prisoner experience and its implications for offending. More research is needed that seeks to explain the effects identified here and that explores, using nuanced approaches, other prison experiences, and the implications of those experiences.

Does Inmate Behavior Affect Post-Release Offending? Investigating the Misconduct-Recidivism Relationship among Youth and Adults

Recent scholarship has highlighted the potential implications of in-prison experiences for prisoner reentry and, in particular, recidivism. Few penological or reentry studies, however, have examined the relationship between one experience that may be especially consequential, inmate misconduct, and recidivism. The goal of this study is to address this gap in the literature by employing a matching design that estimates the effect of inmate misconduct on reoffending, using data on a release cohort of Florida prisoners. The results indicate that inmates who engage in misconduct, violent misconduct in particular, are more likely to recidivate. Consistent with prior scholarship, we find that this relationship holds only for adult inmates. These findings underscore the importance of prison experiences for understanding recidivism, examining youthful and adult inmate populations separately, and devising policies that reduce misconduct.

Race, Ethnic, and Gender Divides in Juvenile Court Sanctioning and Rehabilitative Intervention:

Objectives: Drawing on focal concerns theory, as well as scholarship on the juvenile court’s mandate to consider youth culpability and amenability to treatment, we develop hypotheses that seek to examine whether the court will (1) punish Whites less severely and (2) be more likely to intervene with Whites through rehabilitative intervention and, simultaneously, be more punitive and less rehabilitative with minorities, and, in particular, Black males. Method: Florida juvenile court referral data and multinomial logistic regression analyses are used to examine multicategory disposition and “subdisposition” measures. Results: Findings suggest that minority youth, especially Black males, are not only more likely to receive punitive sanctions, they also are less likely than White youth to receive rehabilitative interventions and instead experience significantly higher rates of dismissals. The analyses indicate that similar racial and ethnic disparities emerge when “subdispositions”—specifically, placement options within diversion and probation—are examined. Conclusions: The results underscore the salience of race, ethnicity, and gender in juvenile court decisions about punitive sanctioning and rehabilitative intervention, as well as the importance of employing multicategory disposition measures that better reflect the range of sanctioning and intervention options available to the court.

Incarceration Heterogeneity and Its Implications for Assessing the Effectiveness of Imprisonment on Recidivism

Mass incarceration has led to increased interest in understanding the effects of imprisonment. Reviews of criminological theory and research report mixed evidence that incarceration reduces recidivism; indeed, some studies report criminogenic effects. We argue that a better understanding of the heterogeneity of incarceration—including the types and sequences of sanctions and experiences that occur before, during, and after imprisonment—and of incarceration effects among different groups is important for two reasons. First, it can assist with assessing the salience of prior research on the effects of incarceration on recidivism. Second, it serves to identify conceptual and methodological challenges that must be addressed to provide credible assessments of incarceration effects. The paper argues that incarceration likely exerts a variable effect depending on the nature of the prison experience, the counterfactual conditions, including prior sanction history, and the specific populations subject to imprisonment. Implications for theory, research, and policy are discussed.

What is the effect of IQ on offending

The aim of this study is to advance scholarship on the IQ–offending relationship by examining the functional form of this relationship and whether confounding introduced by socioeconomic status (SES) and other factors can be adequately addressed. Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are analyzed using generalized propensity score and propensity score matching analyses. The results suggest that the relationship is curvilinear, such that lower and higher levels of IQ are associated with lower levels of offending. They also indicate that the distribution of confounders, especially SES, may limit the ability of statistical approaches to arrive at unbiased estimates of IQ effects.

Who Gets Visited in Prison? Individual- and Community-Level Disparities in Inmate Visitation Experiences:

Scholarship has shown that visitation helps individuals maintain social ties during imprisonment, which, in turn, can improve inmate behavior and reduce recidivism. Not being visited can result in collateral consequences and inequality in punishment. Few studies, however, have explored the factors associated with visitation. This study uses data on Florida inmates to identify individual- and community-level factors that may affect visitation. Consistent with expectations derived from prior theory and research, the study finds that inmates who are older, Black, and who have been incarcerated more frequently experience less visitation. In addition, inmates who come from areas with higher incarceration rates and higher levels of social altruism experience more visits. Unexpectedly, however, sentence length and economic disadvantage are not associated with visitation. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Spatial Distance, Community Disadvantage, and Racial and Ethnic Variation in Prison Inmate Access to Social Ties

Objectives: This article examines the impact of distal prison placements on inmate social ties. Specifically, we test whether distance adversely affects inmates by reducing their access to family and friends and then test whether the effects are amplified for minorities and inmates who come from socially disadvantaged areas. Methods: These questions are assessed using a sample of inmates that includes all convicted felony offenders admitted to a single state’s prison system over a three-year period. Results: We find that inmates vary greatly in the distance from which they are placed from home and that Latinos are placed more distally than Blacks and Whites. We also find that distance and community disadvantage adversely affect the likelihood of inmate visitation. Although the adverse effect of distance appears to be similar across racial and ethnic groups, a difference exists among Blacks—for this group, high levels of community disadvantage amplify the adverse effects of distance. Conclusions: This study identifies an important dimension along which incarceration may adversely impact inmates, their families, and the communities from which they come, and how these effects may be patterned in ways that disproportionately affect minorities and prisoners from disadvantaged areas.

Offending and Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Criminal Justice

Scholars and policy makers have expressed concern that observed minority differences in processing (e.g., arrest, detention, conviction) and sentencing stem not from the legal merits of cases but rather from intentional or unintentional discrimination. An additional concern is that there may be disparities in society that lead to offending differences among racial and ethnic groups, and that these differences may be amplified by disparities that minorities experience in and through the criminal justice system. In this article, we identify the dimensions along which information is needed to document minority disparities in criminal justice processing and sanctioning and to guide interventions to reduce them. We conclude that research to date has not systematically documented the true prevalence of minority disparities in criminal justice processing or sanctioning or the causes of them. We then argue that social structural disparities faced by minorities warrant comparable attention to that given to criminal justice disparities. Documentation of these disparities and their causes will be necessary to shed light on the exercise of formal social control. It also can contribute to efforts to understand offending and how most effectively to reduce crime and unfair sanctioning.

U.S. Prisoner Reentry Health Care Policy in International Perspective: Service Gaps and the Moral and Public Health Implications

More than 735,000 inmates are released from U.S. prisons annually, many of whom have mental and physical health problems that go largely unaddressed during incarceration and on return to society. That has led some scholars and policy makers to imply this is specific to the United States and to call for reducing the health needs–services gap among inmates and ex-prisoners. The goal of this article is to argue that (a) the magnitude of this gap, while likely large, remains unknown, (b) the United States is far from unique in having a needs–services gap, (c) the decision to provide health care to inmates and ex-prisoners constitutes a moral policy decision with potentially profound public health and cost impacts on offenders, their families, and the communities to which they return, and (d) research on health care needs–services gaps among inmate and reentry populations should become a priority for developing cost-effective, evidence-based responses to address such gaps. The article concludes with a discussion of implications for research and policy.