Prisoners on remand are entitled to three visits per week, and convicted prisoners are allowed one visit a week. Each facility sets its own days and hours. In general, a visit may last between 30 and 45 minutes in remand centres, one hour in prisons and several hours in high-security prisons. Visits can take place in common rooms or individual cubicles.

Some prisons have family parlours and family visit units (unités de vie familiale (UVF)), which are made available to prisoners at least once every three months as a general rule. The length of the visit depends on the distance the visitor has to travel.
Family parlours measure 12 to 15 m² and are closed to allow privacy and intimacy. Prisoners (whether on remand or convicted) can receive visitors for a maximum of six hours.
The UVFs are two- to three-room apartments, allowing longer family visits of 6 to 72 hours. Because there are so few, the administration puts those who are eligible on a waiting list, thus reducing the effectiveness of the mechanism. Yet new UVFs are sometimes left unused for several months after they have been constructed.

As of 1 January 2018 most prisons did not have family parlours or UVFs: 100 family parlours exist in 27 prisons and 146 UVFs are in use in 45 prisons.

If they provide justification for their request, prisoners may ask to be transferred in order to be nearer their families. The request must be addressed to the prison governor and the procedure is lengthy.

Reception areas for families awaiting parlour visits are set up near the prisons and are run by private organisations and/or service providers. Other organisations focus on maintaining contact between incarcerated parents and their children, and, if necessary, they escort them to the parlours.

The inaccessibility of prisons often makes it difficult to maintain family contact. The cost of travel, the remoteness of some prisons and the lack of public transport constitute real barriers.

The arrangements for mandatory searching of prisoners and their family members and friends are also an obstacle, causing some prisoners to refuse visits in order to spare their visitors the ordeal. Contact with children is another difficult issue. Some people prefer not to let them know about their situation. According to a 2014 study, two out of three parents said that “some, or all, of their children were aware that they were in prison” and half of them said that they never saw their children.

Family members and friends are not always informed about visiting protocols. Difficulties are routinely observed: computer errors, defective equipment, prisoner transfers.