Visiting Room: A Response to Prison Visitation Policies: A Fifty-State Survey

Abstract

In 2013, Sesame Street introduced its first Muppet with an incarcerated parent, Alex. Also this year, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder acknowledged that "too many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long and for no good law enforcement reason." With this Feature in the Yale Law & Policy Review, Chesa Boudin, Trevor Stutz, and Aaron Littman bring long-overdue attention to prison visitation, which affects so many American families, and especially the children of the incarcerated. The authors' important effort could help to undermine the radically isolating style of imprisonment that has developed in the U.S. during an era of mass incarceration, in which visitation is markedly restricted compared to other advanced democracies.