The Idaho Department of Correction calls the people in its custody residents. Not inmates, not offenders, not convicts. Residents. It is a word the department uses deliberately, as part of a stated rehabilitative philosophy, a recognition that most people who come into the system will eventually come out of it and return to communities they came from. It is also the right word for what this article is about. A parent who is a resident of an Idaho correctional facility is not gone. They are somewhere else, temporarily, and the question is what they do with the time they are away.
I went into the federal system, not IDOC. I went in when my kids were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20. The word my institution used for me did not change what those 66 months felt like from the inside or what they cost my family. But I notice the Idaho choice. It is a choice about what a person inside a correctional facility is allowed to still be. They are still a parent. They are still a family member. The question is whether both parents are willing to act like it.
What Idaho's geography does to families
Idaho is long and narrow, running from the Nevada border in the south nearly 500 miles north to Canada. The population is heavily concentrated in the Treasure Valley around Boise in the southwest corner of the state. The correctional facilities are spread across the full length of the state.
Idaho State Correctional Institution south of Boise is the entry point for all men entering the Idaho system. The reception and diagnostic unit there processes everyone before permanent assignment, which means a family that has spent months building a relationship with one facility may suddenly find their loved one somewhere else entirely. North Idaho Correctional Institution is in Cottonwood, a small community in the Camas Prairie four hours north of Boise. Idaho Correctional Institution is in Orofino, also in the north, another long drive through mountains that close in winter. A family in the Boise area with a parent placed in north Idaho is looking at a day trip each way, mountain passes included.
Idaho also contracts with out-of-state facilities. Some IDOC residents are held at Saguaro Correctional Center in Eloy, Arizona, the same private CoreCivic facility that houses overflow from Hawaii. Others are held at the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex. A family in Twin Falls or Nampa whose parent is in Eloy is not making a long drive. They are buying a plane ticket or accepting that the visit does not happen.
The six-week wait
Idaho requires a minimum of six weeks to process a visitation application. That six weeks begins after the form has been received, reviewed, and a background check completed. For a family trying to bring children to see a parent who has recently been sentenced, six weeks is a significant wait. Children do not have a good way to hold open questions. A 9-year-old who is told they cannot visit for six weeks will fill that time with their own interpretation of why.
What the parent inside can do during that six weeks is use the phone. Calls go through ICS Corrections, billed through ICSolutions, at $0.08 per minute as of April 1, 2026. An account at ICSolutions.com or a call to 888-506-8407 sets up the prepaid account before the first call comes in. The six weeks before visitation is approved is the time to establish the phone rhythm, so the child has something consistent before the first face-to-face visit can happen.
The decision that Idaho's word choice does not make for you
Idaho calling its residents residents reflects a philosophy. It does not make the choices for either parent.
My wife never said a word against me to our six children during 66 months. She had every reason to. She had six kids in a situation I had created. She chose to let them love me without penalty. That is why I have what I have with my adult children now.
The parent inside an Idaho facility carries the same obligation. The call to a child at $0.08 per minute is not the place for the pressure, the instruction, the critique. It is the contact the child gets. Use it to actually be there. Ask what happened at school. Remember what they said last week and ask about it this week. Show the child you are paying attention from wherever the system has placed you. The child who receives that attention maintains the relationship. The child who receives obligatory contact does not.
For the parent at Saguaro or Florence, Arizona, the call is crossing more than state lines. It is the substitute for a visit that requires a plane ticket. Treat it that way.
What the ages mean in Idaho
My children were 9, 11, 12, 15, 18, and 20 when I went in.
The 9-year-old needs the most basic thing, whether the parent is at ISCI south of Boise or at Saguaro in the Arizona desert. Children under 10 build private, silent explanations for a parent's absence. The explanation they reach most often is that they caused it. That belief does not show up in behavior adults can easily see. It settles in quietly and shapes how the child understands themselves for years. Say it directly and say it every time: this is not your fault. You did not do anything wrong. I love you and I am coming home.
The 11 and 12-year-old in Idaho is navigating middle school in a state with distinct urban and rural cultures. A child in Boise is in a different social environment than a child in Cottonwood or Orofino or Twin Falls, and a child in a small north Idaho community has a different experience of visibility than a child in a suburban Treasure Valley school. In both settings, a parent's incarceration is not invisible, and the middle school years are precisely when the peer group starts to matter more than family as the center of identity formation. The parent inside cannot be at the kitchen table for the hard conversation. They cannot be at the game. They cannot be the person the child calls first when something goes wrong at school. What the parent inside can do is call consistently, remember what the child says, ask the specific follow-up question that only a parent paying close attention would know to ask. That continuity of attention, week after week across whatever distance the system has imposed, is the proof of presence when presence is not possible.
The 15-year-old is tracking authenticity. If the call feels like an obligation the incarcerated parent is fulfilling, the teenager will treat it as one. If the call feels like genuine connection, the teenager will stay for it. Ask more than you tell. Listen more than you instruct. The 15-year-old in Idaho who still answers the call from wherever the parent has been placed by the end of the sentence is the one who believed the parent was real, not performing.
The 18 and 20-year-old is an adult making a choice about what relationship to carry forward. Respect that. Show up as someone the choice is easy to make about.
What the outside parent carries in Idaho
Idaho's outdoor culture and tight-knit communities mean that a parent's incarceration is often known in ways it might not be in a more anonymous urban environment. The outside parent is managing children's questions, their own grief, and a community that may or may not respond to the situation with compassion. They are also managing the six-week wait for visitation approval, the logistics of a drive to north Idaho or a flight to Arizona, and the ongoing financial and emotional cost of holding everything together.
What they need from the incarcerated parent is not direction. It is acknowledgment. One call, one message through the ViaPath tablet system, that names specifically what the outside parent is doing and says thank you, is the most stabilizing thing the incarcerated parent can offer. It does not cost much at $0.08 a minute. It costs honesty. My wife carried six children through 66 months and deserved to hear that I saw it and was grateful for it. I said so as often as the access allowed.
For the outside parent in Idaho: the children need to be able to love both their parents. What you say about the incarcerated parent in front of them shapes who those children become and what relationship they can have with that parent on the other side of the sentence. My wife never said anything against me. What I have now is what that cost her and what it made possible.
How communication works in Idaho
Phone calls through IDOC go through ICS Corrections, billed via ICSolutions. The rate is $0.08 per minute as of April 1, 2026, up from $0.06. Set up a prepaid account at ICSolutions.com or by calling 888-506-8407 before the first call. Voicemails cost $1.00 per message. The tablet messaging system (ViaPath, following the transition from JPay completed in 2025) charges $0.25 per message. Video visitation through the tablet runs $0.16 per minute.
For money deposits, IDOC partners with Access Corrections. Personal checks are not accepted; certified check, money order, or online deposit are the options.
For in-person visitation, complete the visitation application and submit it to the specific facility. Allow a minimum of six weeks for processing. All visitors must apply regardless of age. Children 16 and under must be accompanied by a legal guardian. Each facility sets its own visiting schedule; the resident passes that information to approved or potential visitors. Felony convictions disqualify visitors.
Mail rules: letters and photos are accepted; no packages. Photo rules are specific; check with the individual facility before sending.
For residents held out of state at Saguaro or the Central Arizona Florence Correctional Complex, communication runs through the private facility's vendor. Contact Saguaro at (520) 466-3800 and the Florence facility directly for provider and account information.
IDOC main number: (208) 658-2000. IDOC headquarters: 1299 N. Orchard St., Boise, ID 83706. Website: idoc.idaho.gov. Resident search: idoc.idaho.gov.
Federal inmates in Idaho fall under BOP jurisdiction. BOP communication uses TRULINCS for email via CORRLINKS and TRUFONE for phone. FCC rate caps apply; First Step Act programming offers 300 free minutes per month.
Where this leaves you
Idaho chose a word that matters. Residents. The philosophy behind it is that the people in its custody are coming back, that the time inside is meant to be preparation for the life that follows, and that the connections to family and community that survive the sentence are exactly what makes successful reentry possible.
The children of IDOC residents are part of that reentry. The relationship the incarcerated parent maintains with their children during the sentence is the relationship they come home to. Every call that treats the child as someone worth knowing, every letter that is addressed to the specific child about the specific things happening in their specific life, every acknowledgment of what the outside parent is carrying, is building the structure of what waits on the other side of the sentence.
Both parents have to decide, from inside and outside the fence, that the children come first. Idaho calling its people residents is a statement about what the department believes is possible. Both parents making the choices that hold the family together is what makes it true. The calls, the letters, the visits when they are geographically and financially possible, the daily discipline of not using the children as the space where the adult conflict lives: those are the things that build what both parents come home to. Make those choices. Make them from wherever in this system you are.