Anxiety

July 30th, 2026

It’s been at least six weeks now since my wife and I have put in applications to visit a young woman who is currently incarcerated. We also filed an application for the woman’s five-year-old son, who is in our care. The Department of Corrections (DOC) needs to do a background check on all potential visitors, apparently even kindergarten age children. The young woman has not seen her little boy since April, which makes it four months since they were together. The woman is understandably anxious about the situation. It is particularly upsetting for her since my wife, her son, and I plan on making a road trip to Texas three days from now in order to see our grandchildren down there. The young woman was really hoping to see her son before our departure. We were also hoping that would happen. The odds of us visiting her in prison before we head south are getting worse with each passing day.

Early this morning, the woman called us to tell us that the boy and I have been approved to schedule a visit. My wife has not yet been approved. After the mom called us, I immediately went to the ICSolutions website set up a meeting. We can’t schedule a visit directly with anyone at the prison. They outsourced that work to a third party, ICSolutions. It is impossible to make a visit any other way. I tried several times to schedule a visit sometime during the next couple days. I failed. My request was rejected because ICSolutions said that I was not approved. The website said that my approval from the DOC was still pending.

After that, I made several phone calls. I called the people at the prison for help. They told me to check with ICSolutions because in the DOC’s system I had been approved two days ago. I called ICSolutions twice, and they assured me that in their system I was not approved. They did say that my information would be updated tomorrow, and I should show as being approved after that. I will believe it when I see it.

In the meantime, I had four more phone calls from the incarcerated mother. In each call she became more and more agitated. Her anxiety was through the roof. During the fourth call, she tearfully exclaimed,

“I’ll never get to see him!”

I quietly told her, “You will get to see him. The people at ICSolutions said that I can go online tomorrow and I will be able to set up an appointment for a visit. If there are still open visitation slots available during the next three days, I will take one and we will come up to see you. We will drive two hours to the prison, and we can be with you for two hours.”

Now, we wait.

To be fair, the people at the prison and the folks at ICSolutions were polite and sympathetic. They really did try to help me. However, because the computers at the DOC and those at ICSolutions are not on speaking terms, they could do nothing for me. The people working within the system are all decent. The bureaucracy is nothing short of demonic.

Tomorrow morning, I will login to my account at ICSolutions and maybe, just maybe, I will be able to set up a visit.

I am not confident about that.

July 31st, 2026

Update: I finally got an appointment to visit the young woman. It is at 9:30 AM on August 2nd. She will get to see her little boy, at last.