Policing/Incarceration
The effect of prison visitation on post-incarceration risk of reincarceration and mortality, Rhode Island, 2009-2019 Molly Remch* Molly Remch Remch Remch Remch Remch Remch Remch mremch@email.unc.edu
Receiving visitors is an opportunity for incarcerated people to maintain connection to their social networks. We estimate the causal effect of receiving visitors on post-release mortality and, separately, on reincarceration using a cohort of 12,588 people released from the Rhode Island Department of Corrections between 2009 and 2019. We used g-computation with accelerated failure time models and a generalized gamma distribution to estimate the effect of potential interventions in which the mean monthly visits, median monthly visits, number of visits in the last month of incarceration, and percent of months with visits were each increased. We estimated survival curves and risk differences between one- and five-years post-release. During five years post-release, 418 (3.3%) people died and 8,153 (64.8%) people were reincarcerated. Although we did not observe an effect on mortality, the interventions had a protective effect on risk of reincarceration. The five-year risk difference for reincarceration under an intervention that increased everyone’s mean monthly visits by two was -0.04 (95% CI: -0.04, -0.03). These results speak to the importance of social networks in preventing reincarceration. Implementation and evaluation of policies that increase the accessibility of visitation are needed.