A Colorado jail hasn’t allowed in-person visits in nearly 20 years – here’s what research says about visitation’s effects

Research associates visitation with lower reoffending rates after release. Hari Sucahyo/iStock via Getty Images

The Adams County Jail, just north of Denver, does not allow in-person visits. Over the course of their incarceration, people detained there will never share a visiting room with their families and children, or even sit across from them behind a plexiglass barrier.

As in nearly all county jails across Colorado’s Front Range and a growing number of county jails across the U.S., visits happen only over video – on a phone, tablet or computer – for a per-minute fee.