Most ASU students would want to avoid going behind bars, but for a group of ASU students and professors at the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, it was part of an ongoing research project.
ASU professor Kevin Wright said the study focused on the effect prison visits have on inmates. The research generally suggested visitation is a positive experience for prisoners' behaviors, but the previous research was rather basic.
“Yes, visits can be positive and beneficial for inmates, but they also can be stressful and have a negative effect on inmates,” he explained. “We wanted to talk to incarcerated individuals to find out just what takes place during visits.”
Arynn Infante, a graduate student in the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, said there is little evidence surrounding the question of visitations and how they impact inmate behavior.
“We know very little about what happens during a visit, what visitors and inmates talk about, what makes a visit good, or what makes a visit bad,” she said. "This project was meant to capture some of these processes to shed light on an aspect of prison life that is for the most part hidden, but has important implications for adjustment and re-entry.”
During interviews with inmates, students and professors got to understand what kinds of conversations were occurring between inmates and their visitors. Many of the conversations covered a wide range of topics, anything from serious to simple. Some visits might be stressful to both parties, with crying or arguing involved, or they could simple be normal, everyday conversations.
“For some inmates, this is the first time in years that they have had an opportunity to talk to family and friends while sober,” Wright said. “One female inmate told me that her mother actually likes when she is in prison because her mother knows that she is safe and not out on the streets somewhere.”
Infante said a common emotional topic shared between visitors and inmates was life after prison, such as where they would live or work.
“It was exciting for them to think about going home and reuniting with family and friends, but also stressful because of the planning involved,” she explained. “There is a lot of pressure on them to succeed. People are counting on them to 'stay straight' and 'do good.'"
Although it is too early to make conclusions and the data hasn’t been fully analyzed, Wright said he believes the conversations he had with inmates made it clear visitation was important to them.
“In talking with inmates, it seems clear that visitation is important to them, and based on that, you would think it would affect their behavior such that they wouldn’t want to lose visitation privileges,” he said.
Infante said in her experience in speaking with inmates, visitations can spark mixed feelings within prisoners, but is still very important to them.
“It seemed like visitation was central to coping with prison life for many. It provided them an opportunity to reconnect with loved ones and cope with the harsh realities of imprisonment,” Infante said. “Visitation is their only means to maintaining ties with loved ones, so it is very important to them.”
Infante said while in the prison, she got to share a special moment with some of the prisoners, a personal connection that not many research studies tend to do.
“At the end of one of the days interviewing, I read an entire children’s book to a room full of male inmates," she said. "It was a book that an inmate and his mother read each time she visited called ‘Love You Forever’. I had never heard of it, so he made sure to find the library copy of it in the visitation room for me to read before I left. It was such a sweet moment reading that book. I’ll never forget it. It’s moments like that that I didn’t expect to happen, but am so grateful they did."
For criminology and psychology junior Garrett Shipley, the majority of the work he completed on the study was to analyze the data from the questions of the prisoners.
“The work tended to be a bit time-consuming and tedious, but it was definitely worth it in the end,” he said. “I learned a lot about the personal reasons individuals end up in prison and the real struggles they have while inside prison.”
Shipley said the project has had a positive impact on not only his studies but on him personally.
“I felt very honored to be asked to help out with this project,” Shipley said. “Corrections and rehabilitation have become passions of mine, and this project furthered my interest. This project gave me very valuable insight that will help me in the future.”
Reach the reporter at sgreene6@asu.edu or follow @thesydneygreene on Twitter.
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