Tag: bureaucracy

One Little Mistake

July 21st, 2026

Bad news.

A young woman we love is currently incarcerated in a prison. The thing she wants more than anything else is to be visited by her five-year-old son. The prison is a two-hour drive from our home, which makes a visit to see her a bit of a challenge. A bigger challenge is just getting approval from the Department of Corrections to schedule a visit. The young woman was in this prison seven years ago, and I don’t remember the process at that time being this complicated. However, it’s a struggle to get approval now.

The young woman procured applications for us (my wife, her son, and me) almost as soon as she got to the prison. She repeatedly warned us that the applications had to be filled out correctly, or they would be rejected out of hand. The forms have to be perfect to get through the system. Even if the paperwork is filled out accurately, it takes the DOC three weeks or more to make a decision. My wife and I filled out our forms, and I filled out the application for the inmate’s son. We did it to the best of our ability and promptly mailed them. Then we waited, and waited, and waited.

Yesterday, the young woman alerted me that my wife’s request for approval was denied. Why? Because she failed to write down her maiden name on the form. There is a section on the application for reporting any other names or aliases that a person may have used in the past. My wife asked me about that part, and I told her to write down “none”, because she has always used her legal name. Neither of us noticed that the instructions on the form wanted her maiden name. It never occurred to us that anyone would want that. She hasn’t used her maiden name in the last 42 years. However, that error on the form was enough to get it rejected.

Now, she has to start the process all over again. Another three weeks.

My application and that of her the woman’s son are still pending. It’s been over three weeks. We are anxious about this fact, especially the young woman.

Why does it all have to be this hard?

Thinking of Franz Kafka for some reason.

Update: the young woman talked to a social worker in the prison. The DOC background check for visitors can take six weeks. It makes me wonder if the people running the prison even want anyone to visit.

I Have No Idea

July 4th, 2026

We haven’t heard from her in four days. She has been a “resident” at the Community Reintegration Center (the county jail) for over three months. The young woman has been waiting to get transferred to a women’s prison called Taycheedah. She was sentenced to two years in prison at a hearing three weeks ago and has been anxiously waiting to be moved (the jail is not as nice as the prison, which is a truly depressing fact). The Department of Corrections (DOC) does not give an inmate any prior notice before a transfer. Actually, from what I have heard, the DOC seldom gives a prisoner a heads up for any changes. Why does the DOC do that? Because it can. In any case, the young woman had told us during a phone call that the DOC generally moves people from the county jail to Taycheedah on a Tuesday. The woman has been calling our house to speak with her son once a day, every day, for weeks. On Tuesday she stopped calling here.

My wife and I had hoped to hear from her during the last four days. Keep in mind that is nearly impossible for anybody on the outside to call or use the internet to contact an incarcerated individual. It is also difficult for an inmate to call out. Communication between a prisoner and the rest of the world is often limited to snail mail. Yesterday, I tried to go online to determine where the young woman was. My efforts came to naught. The website at the jail did not show her as being at that location and the Taycheedah site showed nothing at all concerning her.

I made two phone calls. The guard at the county jail confirmed to me that the woman was no longer there. He had no other information to give me. When I called Taycheedah, the officer there asked me for her DOC inmate number. I didn’t have that. He politely told me that without the number he could not find her whereabouts online. No shit. I had tried the same thing on my computer before I called the prison. If she is not currently in the DOC data base, apparently, she does not exist.

So, now what? I have no idea. Where is she? Same answer.

The odds are good that this young woman is presently in custody at Taycheedah, but I don’t know that, and that bothers me and my wife. We don’t know what her status is, and we have no idea what to tell her son, should he ask us. Mercifully, he has not thought to do that yet.

Kafka would be proud.

Happy 4th of July.

Update: the young woman called. She is at Taycheedah and I have her DOC number now. Thank God.

Community Reintegration Center

April 4th, 2026

I pulled into the parking lot of the Community Reintegration Center. The center is a rather ugly brick structure. Its primary purpose is to keep some people inside and other people out. The housing area has translucent windows that allow light inside, but do not allow the occupants to look out. The building is surrounded by high fences with razor wire on the top. The place is no way welcoming, not on the outside and definitely not on the inside.

The Community Reintegration Center (CRC) is a jail. Period. I saw no evidence of anybody being reintegrated into the local community. The whole point of the facility is to keep the folks inside separated from the community. Those who are incarcerated within its walls are referred to as “residents” on the CRC website. Residents? Really? I guess in a strange way they chose to reside there, but they are prisoners, plain and simple. Why not just call them that?

I went to the CRC to pick up a young woman’s personal property. It’s not a major issue to pick up her stuff, but I don’t like doing it. This is not the first time that I have had to recovering her belongings, and it’s always a cause for anxiety and melancholy. The CRC has a visitor center, which is the first stop for anybody entering the building. At least they don’t call it a “welcome center”, because it’s not. The people working there are polite and professional, but the hall is a bit like an ER: nobody wants to be there. Nobody.

Since I was not there to actually visit the woman, I did not need to go through a security check. I did have to show my ID, twice, while I was there. After I told the guard who I was and why I was there, she called the lady in the property department to come on down, and then she told me to sit and wait.

The waiting area was strange. There was a total of six chairs arranged in a rectangular formation, two rows of three. The chairs were spaced well apart. The area seemed to be designed to isolate the visitors from each other. One guy who came into the center initially thought to sit in the row of seats that were closer to the entrance for the security check section. He decided to move back to where I was sitting when he realized that those seats upfront all had handcuffs dangling from them.

I sat and waited. It was kind of like going to the DMV, except more intimidating. Nobody is in a rush and there is no place else to go. I had time, so I gazed at the official bulletins posted all over the walls. Other people came inside. Two of them were obviously lawyers. The man and the woman might as well have worn uniforms. They both had that professional legal appearance: they wore suits and carried serious business paperwork in their hands. They had that look on their faces that said, “Let’s get this shit done and get out of here.” Actually, everyone had that look on their face, including me.

At last, the lady from property showed up. She was a tiny, older Black woman wearing a black surgical mask on her face. She carried a large plastic bag in one hand and some papers in the other.

She asked me for my ID. I fumbled for it. She told me to take my time. She asked me how I was. I told her that I had done this sort of thing before. She gave me a questioning look. I tried to clarify what I meant by saying,

“Not here, but for the same person.”

She nodded. Then she told me,

“When I was young, I made some bad decisions. Then I had time to think about what I had done, and I considered my options. Don’t give up on her.”

I replied, “I don’t. I can’t. My wife and I care for our grandson fulltime.”

Then lady asked me, “How old is he?”

“Five.”

She sighed and said, “Well, maybe he won’t remember any of this.”

I considered that. Maybe she is right. But this stint in jail isn’t the whole story. This is just the start of a long absence. The boy will remember something, even if it’s only a feeling of abandonment. He won’t forget, not entirely.

She had me sign the paperwork. I grabbed the bag. As I walked away, the woman called after me, “Don’t give up on her!”

As I tried to open the exit door, I called back to her,

“I won’t!”