Penmate Inmate Support Guides
Visitation

What Happens If You Need to Cancel or Change Your Scheduled Visit

Plans change. If you already have a scheduled visit with the Georgia Department of Corrections (GDC), you have two online options: add visitors to your existing appointment or cancel it entirely.

• 3 min read Verified from official sources

GDC's visit-inmate page offers two tools for managing existing appointments. The "Add Visitor" option lets you find a scheduled visit and add more people to it. The "Cancel my visit" option lets you pull up that appointment and cancel it. Use these official tools rather than starting a new request from scratch. They're designed to locate and modify the appointment you already have on file.

  1. Open the “Add Visitor” option on the GDC visit-inmate site. This tool is specifically for a visit that is already scheduled.
  2. Find your scheduled visitation. Follow the prompts so the system can locate the existing appointment.
  3. Select the visit you want to update. Make sure you are working with the correct scheduled visit.
  4. Add the additional visitor(s). Enter the information requested to include them on that scheduled visit.
  5. Confirm your update. Finish the process so the added visitors are attached to the appointment.

Tip: The "Add Visitor" tool only works for visits already on the calendar. If you start from the wrong page, you might end up creating a new request instead of updating your existing appointment.

  1. Open the “Cancel my visit” option on the GDC visit-inmate site. This is the correct tool for canceling a previously scheduled visitation appointment.
  2. Find your scheduled visitation. Follow the prompts to pull up the appointment you want to cancel.
  3. Confirm the cancellation. Complete the final confirmation so the visit is actually canceled in the system.

Reminder: Finish the entire cancellation process, including the final confirmation step. Closing out early could leave your appointment in limbo.

Timing trips people up when rescheduling. For weekend visits, the cutoff to submit a request is 5:00 PM on Wednesday of the same week. For state holidays, requests must be in by 5:00 PM three days before the holiday. Waiting until the last minute can leave you locked out of that time slot entirely. If you know you cannot make it, cancel promptly. Then check the calendar and submit your next request early enough to beat the cutoff.

  • ✓ Cancel as soon as you know you cannot make the scheduled visit, so there is no confusion about whether you are still on the list.
  • ✓ If you are aiming for a weekend visit, submit the visitation request by 5:00 PM Wednesday of that same week.
  • ✓ If you are aiming for a state-holiday visit, submit the visitation request by 5:00 PM three days before the holiday.
  • ✓ Build in extra time for changes, especially around holidays when deadlines come up fast.

Warning: Miss the 5:00 PM Wednesday cutoff for weekends, or the 5:00 PM cutoff three days before a state holiday, and you may lose that visit slot entirely.

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