Numerous articles and textbooks advise qualitative researchers on accessing "hard-to-reach" or "hidden" populations. In this article, I compare two studies that I conducted with justice-involved women in the United States: a yearlong ethnography inside a state women's prison and an interview study with formerly incarcerated women. Although these two populations are interconnected--and both are widely deemed hard-to-reach--the barriers to access differed. In the prison study, hard-to-reach reflected an issue of "institutional legitimacy," in which researchers must demonstrate themselves and their proposed study as legible, appropriate, and worthy to organizational gatekeepers. In the reentry study, hard-to-reach reflected an issue of "structural precarity," in which researchers must navigate the everyday vulnerabilities of research participants' social position to ensure the study is inclusive and feasible. Juxtaposing these two experiences, I propose greater nuance to the term hard-to-reach such that researchers may proactively address institutional and structural barriers to access.