Achievement

One of our IGERT fellows (Sarah Tahamont) has written an excellent research paper that studies how family visits to state prisoners impacts the likelihood that such inmates commit behavioral infractions behind bars. The paper exploits the fact that there is a great deal of variation across the country in how far away inmates are from their home counties. Inmates that are placed far away are considerably less likely to be visited. Using a nationally representative survey, the study shows that family visits substantially an significantly reduce most behavioral violation, some of which are quite serious. The one violation that increases in likelihood with additional family visits is drug violations.