Bill Clements Unit Visiting Hours. Weekday Slots Are Video Only

The Weekday Hours Are Video, Not Visits

This is the single thing most likely to send a family on a wasted drive to Amarillo, so it goes first.

TDCJ publishes visiting hours per unit, and it publishes them as a grid with one column per visit type. The William P. Clements Unit, which TDCJ also labels Bill Clements on its schedule, is one of very few units with anything in the weekday column, which is why several guides have written it up as “Clements has Monday, Wednesday and Friday visiting.” Read down the column instead of across the row and the picture changes. Here is the Clements row, read on September 1, 2026:

Visit type	Days	Hours
Contact	Saturday and Sunday	8:00 AM to 5:30 PM
Regular	Saturday and Sunday	8:00 AM to 5:30 PM
Restricted	Saturday and Sunday	8:00 AM to 5:30 PM
Video / Tablet	Saturday and Sunday, plus Monday, Wednesday and Friday	8:00 AM to 5:30 PM on weekends, 1:00 PM to 5:30 PM on weekdays

You cannot sit down with him at Clements on a weekday. The weekday block belongs to the video and tablet row and nowhere else.

Where does the confusion come from? TDCJ’s visitation rules let some units add Monday, Wednesday and Friday to the weekend schedule. A few units use that for weekday in-person visits. Clements is not one of them: here the weekday block is video only.

What Each Visit Type Means Here

Three of the four column names describe in-person visits, and one of them is misleading enough to catch people at the gate.

Regular does not mean an ordinary visit. TDCJ’s own visitation rules say general visits “are also referred to as non-contact and regular visits.” A Regular visit is a visit through a barrier. Families read the word on the schedule, picture a table, and find out on arrival.

Contact is the type that allows physical contact. Restricted is tighter again. TDCJ does not define it in its published rules, so ask the visiting staff on (806) 381-7080 which type applies to him. At a unit holding custody levels G1 through G5 plus Security Detention, that answer varies more than it would at a general-population prison.

There is no death row row on the Clements schedule. Texas holds men under a death sentence at a different unit.

Whichever type applies, the rest of the timing is statewide. A regular visiting period is two hours. A visiting cycle starts on Monday and ends on the following Sunday, with normally one visit per cycle. Every visit ends at 5:30 PM no matter when it started, so a late arrival costs you time rather than gaining it at the end.

Getting Approved, and the 60-Day Wait

Two separate things have to happen before you can walk in, and mixing them up is the most common reason a family believes it is approved when it is not.

First, he puts you on the Visitors List. TDCJ’s rules are blunt about this: the incarcerated person, and not a visitor, must request that someone be added, and a visitor cannot request to be placed on a list. The only exception is a court-appointed guardian.

• He submits up to 10 names on Form RO-1, Request for Placement on Visitors List, with each person’s physical address, phone number and relationship.
• The list can be changed once every six months at an institutional unit like Clements. Corrections to an entry you already have, such as a new address, can be made any time without restarting that clock.
• TDCJ does not publish Form RO-1 for download. You cannot fill it in or send it. He gets it from unit staff.
• A different form, RO-2, covers a current or former TDCJ employee. Form I-164 is for attorneys and consular officials, not for family, whatever a search result may suggest.
• If you are removed from a list, that decision is appealable in writing to the Director’s Review Committee, PO Box 99, Huntsville, TX 77342, within 14 days of the written notice.

Second, there is a 60-day wait for contact visits. TDCJ counts it from the date it received him. For his first 60 days there are no contact visits, which is worth knowing before booking a long trip to Amarillo. At a state jail the same wait is 30 days, but Clements is not a state jail.

Then you set up a portal account, which is a third thing again. Visits are booked through TDCJ’s Online Visitation Portal or the warden’s office, between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM, at least one day and not more than seven days ahead. You create the account, confirm it with the key TDCJ emails you, answer the background questions, complete your profile, then add him by TDCJ or SID number and request approval. The portal is open to residents of the United States, Canada and Mexico. The portal account schedules visits. It does not put you on the Visitors List.

For a minor who is not the child of the person you are visiting, TDCJ prints a Non-Victim Child Affidavit as an attachment on page 36 of its I-218 visitation rules. There is no standalone download of that form.

ID, Coins and the Dress Code

What TDCJ publishes statewide, all of which applies at Clements:

• ID: every visitor aged 18 or over needs current, official, government-issued photo identification showing a current physical address. A student ID does not count for an adult.
• Money: up to $35 in coins, plus one debit or credit card per adult. Bills are not allowed inside.
• With a baby: three diapers, wipes, and two bottles or a sippy cup.
• Clothing: nothing tight, revealing or see-through. Sleeveless is fine if shoulders are covered. Shorts and skirts no shorter than three inches above the middle of the knee. Sandals are allowed, which surprises people used to other systems.
• An all-white outfit is barred. That one catches visitors out more than any other line in the code, and it is easy to walk into by accident.
• If your clothing fails at the gate, a paper gown is available rather than a wasted trip. The duty warden has the final say either way.
• Children under 18 are never pat searched.

Children aged 17 and under do not count toward the two-adult limit, so bringing a child does not use up a visitor slot. TDCJ also allows a hardship visit, which lets a 16- or 17-year-old on the Visitors List see an incarcerated parent or legal guardian without an adult escort, on the warden’s written approval arranged ahead of time.

Travelling to the Panhandle

Amarillo is a long way from most of Texas, and TDCJ has allowances built for exactly that. All of them are at the warden’s discretion and all of them are arranged in advance, not asked for at the gate.

• Extended visits of up to four hours, for visitors travelling more than 250 miles one way. From Dallas, Houston, San Antonio or the Valley, that threshold is met several times over.
• Long-distance special visits of up to eight hours in total, split across two consecutive days at no more than four hours a day, available once a month.
• Split visits, which divide the visit into one- or two-hour blocks across up to four adults. Useful when more people have travelled than can sit down at once. This one is requested at check-in.

If something goes wrong on the day, TDCJ runs an Ombudsman Visitation Hotline on (936) 437-4927, toll-free (844) 476-1289, staffed 8:00 AM to 5:00 PM on Saturdays and Sundays. Almost no other guide publishes it. The unit’s own number is (806) 381-7080.

One last Clements-specific thing worth checking before a long drive. TDCJ lists Mental Health among the unit’s custody categories, and Clements is the only prison in Texas running PAMIO, a structured program for people held in Restrictive Housing and G5 custody. Housing assignment changes what kind of visit is possible, and it can change while you are planning. Confirming his assignment in the same week you travel is worth the phone call.