Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

Skip to content

A New Role for Technology? The Implementation and Impact of Video Visits in State Prisons, Washington, 2012-2015

Metadata Updated: November 28, 2023

Research shows that prison visitation is integral to the success of incarcerated people, reducing recidivism, facilitating reentry into the community, and promoting positive parent-child relationships. However, people are often incarcerated long distances from their home communities in areas that are difficult to reach by public transport, creating significant barriers to in-person visitation. Departments of corrections are exploring the use of computer-based video visits as a means to address some of the visitation needs of those in custody in a cost-effective way while continuing to encourage in-person visits. To learn more about this practice, the study team conducted the following research activities: A survey of incarcerated people: The study team surveyed 211 people incarcerated in Washington State prisons about their use of video visits, their perceptions of the service, and their experiences of in-person visits more generally. This was a self-administered, pen-and-paper survey. An impact evaluation of video visits: The study team analyzed individual-level administrative data from the Washington Department of Corrections (WADOC) and the private video visit vendor (JPay) to understand whether use of the service affected four outcomes: 1) the number of in-person visits people received, 2) the number of rule violations (of any severity) people committed in prison, 3) the number of general (ie. non-serious) rule violations they committed, and 4) the number of serious (as defined by WADOC) rule violations that were committed. The researchers used two analytic techniques: 1) a difference-in-difference test, using inverse probability of treatment weighting, and 2) Bayesian additive regression trees. An analysis of in-person visit rates: The study team analyzed administrative data relating to all people who were incarcerated for the 12 month period ending November 2015 (n=11,524). The study team produced descriptive statistics and conducted negative binomial regressions to understand the rates of in-person visits and how these related to the characteristics of the incarcerated people.

Access & Use Information

Restricted: This dataset can only be accessed or used under certain conditions. License: us-pd

Downloads & Resources

Dates

Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023

Metadata Source

Harvested from DOJ JSON

Additional Metadata

Resource Type Dataset
Metadata Created Date August 18, 2021
Metadata Updated Date November 28, 2023
Publisher National Institute of Justice
Maintainer
Identifier 3466
Data First Published 2020-02-27T09:54:51
Language eng
Data Last Modified 2020-02-27T09:58:59
Rights These data are restricted due to the increased risk of violation of confidentiality of respondent and subject data.
Public Access Level restricted public
Bureau Code 011:21
Metadata Context https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.jsonld
Metadata Catalog ID https://www.justice.gov/data.json
Schema Version https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema
Catalog Describedby https://project-open-data.cio.gov/v1.1/schema/catalog.json
Harvest Object Id ede51769-fc05-4bb0-81dc-05b5a03d9697
Harvest Source Id 3290e90a-116f-42fc-86ac-e65521ef3b68
Harvest Source Title DOJ JSON
License http://www.usa.gov/publicdomain/label/1.0/
Program Code 011:060
Publisher Hierarchy Office of Justice Programs > National Institute of Justice
Source Datajson Identifier True
Source Hash 7adc96867bd115f63cc531aae3a59ad28291d753a64d405d268ce24f44bf2618
Source Schema Version 1.1

Didn't find what you're looking for? Suggest a dataset here.