How Incarceration Policy Affects Relationships

Social Media

Incarceration poses major challenges to the relationships between people incarcerated and the people they love. Existing policies and lack of family-friendly polices have only exacerbated these challenges and increases the risk of recidivism.

Key Points

The United States incarcerates over one million people every year (Carson & Kucklow, 2023); it has the highest incarceration rate of any democratic nation, and only three countries in the world incarcerate people at greater rates (Widra, 2024). Disproportionately, those incarcerated are people of color and people with low socioeconomic status. For example, although 41% of people who are incarcerated are Black, Black people are only 14% of the overall U.S. population. Prior to incarceration, 84% of people in correctional facilities had an income of less than $15,000 a year, and many earned no money at all (Hayes & Barnhorst, 2020; Martinez & Passel, 2025; Miller, 2021; Sawyer & Wagner, 2025). Incarceration affects not only those in jail or prison, but also their families, the people they love, and their communities: 45% of all Americans, and 63% of Black or Native American people, have had an immediate family member incarcerated (Enns et al., 2019).

How did we get here? Many scholars argue that understanding mass incarceration requires tracing centuries back to the invention of race as a social construct (Alexander, 2012). The United States has deployed carceral systems—systems of punishment, violence, and control—against minoritized people since its founding. Although a full telling of this history is beyond the scope of this paper, some of the most proximal events include the “War on Drugs” in the 1980s and 1990s, which precipitated incarceration on an unprecedented scale (Alexander, 2012). More recently, the criminal justice system has shifted towards calls to incorporate research evidence into practice, encouraging judicial decision-makers to consider multiple factors implicated in recidivism, including relationships (Andrews & Bonta, 2010). It remains unclear whether this desire has influenced legal decision-making consistent with the research evidence.

This paper examines how public policies, laws, and programs affect relationships between people who are incarcerated and those they love through the lens of social psychological research on close relationships (Finkel, 2025). Why should policymakers seek to understand how incarceration affects people's close relationships? Put simply, strong relationships reduce recidivism—the risk of future involvement in the criminal justice system and returning to prison (Mowen et al., 2019). Specifically, longitudinal research finds that people who have been released are less likely to become reincarcerated when they reported having strong close relationships. Although estimates vary, approximately 20–50% of incarcerated men have a romantic relationship partner (Comfort, 2008). Romantic relationships, in particular, are more strongly associated with happiness in life than the quality of family, friendship, or community relationships, or the quality of health, work, or finances (Glenn & Weaver, 1981). Furthermore, people in high-quality relationships live longer than those in low-quality relationships (Coyne et al., 2001), and lacking social relationships is a stronger mortality risk than moderate amounts of smoking (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2010).

Couples and families experience multiple “crisis periods” during the incarceration process (Weintraub, 1976), including arrest, pre-trial, trial, sentencing, incarceration, and post release. We focus on three periods that have received the most relevant research attention: pre-incarceration, ¹ incarceration, and re-entry, considering both the incarcerated partner (the “inside partner”) and the non-incarcerated partner (the “outside partner”). Although the primary focus of this paper is on romantic relationships, we also examine how policies affect children, other family members, and those without any close relationships at all. Throughout the paper, we discuss specific policies, programs, and laws, ranging from those at the levels of federal, state, and local governments to those enacted by specific law enforcement organizations, jails, and prisons. Many of these state, local, and organizational policies differ based on jurisdiction.

Pre-Incarceration

During pre-trial and sentencing, individuals often spend time in jails—correctional facilities for those who are awaiting trial, yet to be sentenced, or have sentences of a year or less for low-level offenses. Between arrest and sentencing, people are sometimes given the opportunity to be released on bail, requiring them to post a certain amount of money to be released while awaiting trial. Being home while awaiting trial enables couples to plan for different sentencing possibilities, including preparing their children. Over 60% of people in jail are those awaiting trial and cannot afford bail; that is, most people currently in jail are legally innocent, and disproportionately low-income or in poverty (Sawyer & Wagner, 2025; U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, 2022). Few cases go to trial; approximately 90% of people take plea deals, especially considering long “mandatory minimum” sentences for low-level drug offenses, which disproportionately affect people of color, especially Black people (Alexander, 2012). These effects are compounded by “three strikes laws” sentencing a person for life if they are convicted of a “serious violent felony” and have two or more prior convictions, one of which is a “serious violent felony” or “serious drug offense” (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.). Despite calls for reform, the United States engages in harsher sentencing than other countries, often without consideration for how incarceration affects relationships or how relationships may shape future likelihood of recidivism.

Implications for Couples

The pre-incarceration period is an extraordinarily stressful time. Whether stress corrodes or strengthens a relationship often depends on the resources couples have to help manage the stressors (Karney & Neff, 2013; Karney, 2021). Stress simultaneously influences the content and the quality of a couple's interactions (Karney & Neff, 2013). For example, a couple facing financial strain must spend their time together discussing how to pay their bills instead of spending time bonding. The pre-incarceration period is very financially stressful; many people cannot afford bail, and bail is just the beginning of the financial strains the couple will face. On average, families pay $13,067 in legal costs due to a person's incarceration, such as attorney fees and court fees (deVuono-powell et al., 2015). Recall that 84% of those incarcerated were making less than $15,000 a year pre-incarceration; 65% of families with an incarcerated family member struggle to meet basic needs due to the financial strain of incarceration. People must navigate not only financial stress but a bureaucratic system with limited information on legal procedures involved in a potential trial, how plea deals or sentencing work, and more broadly, a host of unknowns, including what their lives might be like in the foreseeable future (Weintraub, 1976). If the partner is detained and cannot make bail before sentencing, this time is even more difficult to navigate.

In addition to affecting the content of a couple's interactions, stress also affects interaction quality. Being an understanding and caring partner can be difficult at the best of times; stress makes it much more challenging to do so (Karney, 2021). Furthermore, the nature of the stressor matters. Acute stressors, with a foreseeable endpoint, tend to have less prolonged effects on relationships than chronic stressors (Karney & Neff, 2013). Navigating the criminal justice system is typically a chronic stressor; during the pre-incarceration period, the couple does not yet know how long the sentence will last, and harsh sentencing policies worsen this stress. Moreover, stress associated with a partner's incarceration does not end when their sentence is complete.

Compounding the effects of stress, a partner's detainment represents a major strain to the attachment bond. Secure emotional bonds with other people are fundamental to well-being, and that people maintain these attachment bonds through proximity maintenance—seeking and sustaining physical closeness, especially when the attachment system is under threat (Bowlby, 1969; Finkel, 2025). If the detained partner cannot make bail (as is common), proximity maintenance is essentially severed.

Relationships tend to do best when people's expectations are calibrated to the situations they are navigating, and their relationship can meet those expectations (McNulty, 2016). Romantic partners are often more optimistic than warranted about how long their partner's incarceration will last (Bir et al., 2015). And the longer a person's sentence, the more likely they will lose their outside connections, including their romantic relationships (Massoglia et al., 2011). Viewed together, the pre-incarceration period has a host of policies that strain relationships (e.g., policies related to bail, sentencing), as well as lack of information on how to navigate judicial bureaucracy. Given that the health of a person's relationships can influence sentencing decisions, this system-imposed relationship strain may lead to harsher and more punitive sanctions by judges. However, such overly harsh sentencing decisions may actually increase the risk for recidivism (Marvell & Moody, 2001).

Incarceration

Post-sentencing, people are often detained in prisons—correctional facilities for people with a sentence of over a year. During the incarceration period, communication is key to relationship maintenance, and couples strive to remain connected through phone calls, emails, electronic messages, letters, video visits, and in-person visits (Durante et al., 2023). Although communication and visitation are associated with a host of positive well-being outcomes both during and after a person's incarceration (De Claire & Dixon, 2017), several policies pose financial and logistical roadblocks to relationship maintenance.

Being incarcerated is extremely expensive, and many of these expenses usually fall on a person's loved ones, who (like the incarcerated person), are typically low-income (Bobbitt & Nelson, 2004; Western & Pettit, 2010). People who are incarcerated can earn between an average of 14 cents an hour to 63 cents an hour ² in prison jobs; in some states, they earn no money at all (Sawyer, 2017). As the number of incarcerated people has risen, correctional facilities have lowered the quantity and quality of products they provide to people in prison. As a result, people who are incarcerated often must supplement meals and purchase basic necessities such as extra blankets, underwear, socks, or soap through the commissary store; many spend at least $50 every other week on food alone to avoid hunger (Bardelli et al., 2023). The incarcerated individual's loved ones often primarily or entirely fund these commissary accounts.

Communication also carries heavy costs. In 2024, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) introduced a policy to reduce the cost per minute for phone calls from $0.14 to $0.06, which would save incarcerated people and their loved ones millions of dollars (FCC, 2024). However, in 2025, the FCC rolled back this policy due to pushback from legislators and correctional facility workers (Bertram, 2025), which means that loved ones must continue to foot high phone call prices for the foreseeable future. Emails and electronic messaging are also expensive; each electronic message costs $.27 to $.30 on average, and can be as high as $.50 (Wessler, 2023). These costs may seem low on paper, but they quickly add up; more than 1 in 3 people go into debt due to the cost of communicating with and visiting an incarcerated loved one (deVuono-powell et al., 2015).

If partners want to spend time together face-to-face, they must navigate in-person visitation, which can be difficult to arrange and experience (Boppre et al., 2022). Even obtaining approval can be a bureaucratic minefield, requiring: (1) the visitor to locate the incarcerated person, (2) the incarcerated person to complete an information form for each visitor, (3) mailing the form to the visitor, (4) the visitor filling out the rest of the form and mailing the completed form back, (5) the bureau potentially requesting additional information from the visitor or from other agencies, and (6) the incarcerated person being notified (Federal Bureau of Prisons, n.d. a, n.d. b). The bureaucracy of this process is a major stressor to romantic partners and family members (Boppre et al., 2022).

Visitation is also financially costly. There are no policies in place to ensure incarcerated individuals are at correctional facilities near their loved ones; prisons are on average 100 miles away from urban centers (Poehlmann et al., 2010), and incarcerated individuals can be involuntarily relocated during their incarceration (Brooks, 2025). As a result, a person's ability to visit their incarcerated partner is often unpredictable. Traveling is a major barrier to visitation; although some facilities have buses, visitation is typically the responsibility of the person visiting. People sometimes drive over 15 h to get to a facility; as a result, some families move to be closer to their incarcerated loved one (Boppre et al., 2022; Nickels, 2020). Even after long travel times, outside partners only have a few hours to spend time with the inside partner; no federal facilities allow for extended or overnight visits (Federal Bureau of Prisons, n.d. a, n.d. b).

Once at the visit site, the procedures of visitation are invasive, uncomfortable, and even traumatic to outside partners (Comfort et al., 2005). Reports from women partners highlight the demeaning and unpredictable nature of being checked for the appropriateness of their clothes, especially because clothing regulation standards differ between facilities (Boppre et al., 2022; Comfort et al., 2005). This experience can produce secondary prisonization—an ambiguous, liminal status between incarceration and freedom (Comfort, 2008).

Implications for Couples

The ability to be a responsive partner is essential to a romantic relationship (Reis & Shaver, 1988). People perceive their partner as responsive when their partner understands, validates, and cares for them in response to self-disclosure, but the degree to which a person's partner can be responsive depends on their context. That context during incarceration is typically short phone or video calls that the correctional staff are monitoring (Comfort, 2008). As a result, partners may self-disclose less because they know the correctional facility staff are listening, lack time to discuss deeper issues, or cannot afford the cost of communication (Comfort et al., 2005, 2018). If people cannot self-disclose, their partners cannot be responsive, reducing feelings of closeness. These barriers to self-disclosure also affect the attachment bond; incarceration can disrupt the partner's ability to serve as a safe haven—a source of comfort and reassurance during stressful times (Bowlby, 1969; Finkel, 2025). If a person cannot share their stressors with their partner, the partner cannot be a safe haven.

Incarceration also impacts couples’ interdependence (i.e., the degree to which partners’ outcomes influence each other; Finkel, 2025; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). Interdependence facilitates closeness between partners and enables them to pursue goals together and share a sense of reality about the world (Finkel, 2025). Policies surrounding incarceration make it difficult for partners to rely on each other. The inside partner can do little to contribute materially to the household income or household duties, and outside partners can essentially become single parents (Turney et al., 2023). Penal policy also presents barriers to emotional interdependence. Although visitation helps maintain connections (Boppre et al., 2022), the complicated approval procedures, long travel times, and unpredictable visitation regulations reduce the likelihood of outside partners coming to the correctional facility (Mowen & Visher, 2016).

Couples work against these barriers to maintain their relationships. Outside partners often take on additional work to afford phone calls and visitation (Bruns, 2019) and alter their schedules so that they are available during approved call times (Nickels, 2020). Inside partners are extra cautious as the days get nearer to visitation so that their visitation privileges are not removed (Nur & Krushas, 2025). Despite the challenges they face, many couples can and do maintain relationships—which lowers the risk of recidivism and enhances community safety after the inside partner leaves prison (Mowen et al., 2019). In fact, the relationship is not at its greatest risk of dissolving while a partner is incarcerated. That risk is highest on re-entry (Comfort et al., 2018).

Reentry

When a person is released from a correctional facility, they receive clothes to wear, minimal “gate money,” and transportation to either the county they were convicted in or their residence (Cornell Law School, n.d.). In New York, the average gate money is $40 (McKay et al., 2016). Parole rules vary for each individual, but they often include reporting to a parole officer in person, finding and maintaining employment, regular drug testing, not changing residence or employment without permission, not traveling without permission, and not associating with people with a criminal record (Wiggins et al., 2022). Many requirements of parole are accompanied by a host of financial fees that the formerly incarcerated person is expected to shoulder, such as administrative fees just for being supervised (e.g., 33 states impose monthly fees, ranging from $10–$208), drug testing and treatment, participating in programs or community service, and electronic monitoring (Fine and Fees Justice Center, 2022). Failure to pay these fees or follow other requirements can result in a person being imprisoned again. Given the lack of structural support for a person to maintain the conditions of their parole, loved ones are often the person's only source of financial and emotional support preventing them from returning to prison.

Finding housing and employment can be two of the biggest challenges to re-entry (Bushway et al., 2007; Miller, 2021). Although reentering people are motivated to find jobs and contribute financially to their families, they are relegated to a form of de-humanizing citizenship with no legal protections against employment or housing discrimination (Miller, 2021). In many cases, employers dismiss applicants off-hand who have had to indicate that they have a criminal record. Housing policy creates substantial barriers, too; “one strike” laws enable public housing to deny people with criminal records (Alexander, 2012; Desmond, 2017). Furthermore, the federal Fair Housing Act does not protect people from discriminatory housing practices by private landlords, which can result in loved ones having to move and even downsize their housing to be able to provide approved housing for recently released individuals. Some states have implemented laws placing restrictions on employers or landlords running background checks (National Conference of State Legislatures, 2021; New Jersey Department of Corrections, 2021), but findings on the efficacy of these laws are mixed due to inconsistent application of the law and workarounds for both employers and landlords (Herring & Smith, 2022; Stanley-Becker, 2021). The unemployment rate for formerly incarcerated people is five times higher than for the United States population (Couloute & Kopf, 2018).

Implications for Couples

Even in the best of circumstances, transition periods are destabilizing for couples (e.g., Doss et al., 2009). Re-entry is extremely tumultuous (Comfort et al., 2018); in fact, couples are more likely to end their relationship during the reentry period than during the incarceration period. During the incarceration period, couples often prioritize maintaining positivity and optimism for the future (Nickels, 2020). Many couples bring this optimism into re-entry, although men returning home often have higher hopes for their job prospects than female partners do (Bir et al., 2015). The extreme difficulty that people face in getting jobs can be disappointing both for the reentering partner and the outside partner, who often continues to be a main source of financial support (Comfort et al., 2018). Instrumental support from loved ones (e.g., securing housing, employment, transportation) is especially important in reducing the likelihood of reincarceration—even moreso than emotional support (Mowen et al., 2019). Miller (2021) argues that “relationships, for formerly incarcerated people, now began from a position of need. You need the apartment or the job with the boss who mistreats you or the relationship with the lover you no longer care for because you have nowhere else to go.” (p. 254) Such a dynamic makes it difficult for partners to recreate a partnership of equals and may result in people staying in relationships that are unhappy or even abusive (see Rusbult & Martz, 1995). Even when people want to help their re-entering loved one, public policies can put them in an impossible bind. People in public housing can be evicted if they allow a formerly incarcerated person to stay in their home, forcing them to either risk eviction or deny a place in their home to a person they love (Miller, 2021). The result is that not only is the formerly incarcerated person at risk of losing their housing but so is their family—which poses a risk of recidivism for the formerly incarcerated person, civil suits being filed against their partner, and child welfare involvement for any children in the family (see also Desmond, 2017).

Beyond the Couple: Policies Related to Children

Although we have focused on couples, approximately half of people who are incarcerated also have children (Maruschak et al., 2021). According to family systems theory (Minuchin, 1985), forces outside of the family (e.g., incarceration policies) affect the broader family unit, including how family members interact with one another, which in turn shape child development, behavior, and wellbeing. Specifically, incarceration influences parenting (e.g., less time for bonding activities for the incarcerated parent and household structure), which affects both the child and parent (Arditti & Johnson, 2022).

To illustrate through family systems theory how various public policies influence parent-child bonds, consider visitation policy and parenting classes. First, continuity and quality of visitation are vital for the caregiver-child bond (Poehlmann et al., 2010). Certain visitation policies may distress children (e.g., visits through glass). Current best practices for visitation with children include making visitation friendly for children (e.g., the presence of toys) and allowing physical contact (Cramer et al., 2017). When such policies are in place, visitation benefits child development. Second, resources to facilitate successful parenting can influence child development. Incarceration can create challenges to the incarcerated parent's relationship with their child and their opportunities to develop parenting skills within the child's natural environment. It can also be difficult for parents to navigate discussing their incarceration with their child. Evidence-based parenting classes focused on these challenges benefit child wellbeing and the parent-child relationship (Wildeman et al., 2018). However, parenting classes are not consistently available across prisons (Hoffmann et al., 2010) and vary in their delivery (Newman et al., 2011). Research suggests that family programming, such as visitations and parenting classes, should be part of a larger coordinated effort, with visitations as an opportunity to practice skills developed within the context of parenting classes (Cramer et al., 2017). Such policies have the power to shape the reentry period and lower the risk of reincarceration (Eddy et al., 2022).

The Relationship Paradox

Throughout, we have focused on the ways that policies surrounding incarceration create challenges for couples and for families to maintain their relationships. But this analysis points to something of a paradox: while such challenges make it harder to maintain a relationship and create strain within relationships, people in strong relationships also tend to fare better throughout the criminal justice system. And given the importance of healthy relationships in preventing further system-involvement, it is striking that federal, state, and correctional facility policy all tend to undermine couples’ ability to maintain their connection. At the same time, those without relationships fare worse in this system. During incarceration, people without relationships do not have anyone to fund their commissary, and people who receive few visits experience worse psychological well-being and are more likely to recidivate (De Claire & Dixon, 2017). On re-entry, people are less likely to recidivate if they have support from close relationships, their community, and their probation officers (Liu et al., 2023; Mowen et al., 2019). Although it is important to understand the ways that policies create barriers to relationships, it is also important to emphasize that policy systems and structures penalize people with no relationships at all. Instead of policies supporting people navigating the criminal justice system, that support—financial, emotional, housing, transportation, and even support for basic needs—typically comes from their partners, family, and loved ones. As a result, those without relationships have neither structural policy supports nor close others to turn to for help.

Conclusion

Incarceration affects millions of Americans—the 1.9 million currently in prison or jail, the more than 79 million with a criminal record, and 113 million with a family member who has been to prison or jail (Sawyer & Wagner, 2025). It affects entire neighborhoods and communities, and people's closest relationships. The contexts of pre-incarceration, incarceration, and re-entry lack policies that would help support those relationships and contain policies that produce challenges to them. Although many couples can and do maintain their relationships, they often do so despite the restrictive contexts they are navigating. More than 25 years ago, Ellen Berscheid called for the voices of relationship scientists to be in the room when policymakers make decisions that affect relationships. That call has largely gone unheeded. Incarceration policies affect many of our most vulnerable families, and the policies that exist today create substantial barriers to relationship maintenance. In fact, putting the current set of incarceration policies under the microscope of relationship science, it is hard to imagine a more “relationship-toxic environment.”