This story was told by a person incarcerated at Fresno County Jail.
UCI: Okay, so go ahead and just tell me what it’s been like.
Caller: Well, I’ve already presented this to another student, so I mean, I can do it again, but I mean it might be unnecessary. I just wanted to reassure that the address that she gave me – well I was, it was – I had – okay, well let me just – we’re on quarantine. We haven’t had court.
We’ve been here for three and a half weeks. No movement. This – it’s very overwhelming at times.
We’re dealing with different minds, different levels of consciousness. So, it’s – it’s always something going on that is, you know, not necessarily negative but concerning.
We’re in a tank the size of a Starbucks, a walk-in. And there’s 45 of us in here – 44, 45. There’s no movement. No court.
No one’s stepped out of this tank within three weeks, so we’re overwhelmed. We’re concerned. We’re afraid.
And a lot of us, like I said, we show our concerns and our fear in different ways. So, sometimes some act out.
And it’s a psych tank. A tank that holds people with severe mental illnesses. Not necessarily severe, but people that take medication.
There’s a number of patients in here, inmate patients, that talk to themselves, walk around, you know, do random things that are unnecessary and you know, causes conflict, you know, like just walking and just turning the TV off for no reason.
You know, just silly things like that and talking to themselves, yelling and screaming at themselves. We had a self-mutilation just a couple weeks ago, attempted suicide.
And what was interesting was they had no procedure or policy to – to take the person out of here on quarantine. So, they couldn’t put the person who committed these acts into isolation or –
What they do is primitive here. They handcuff you, and they put you in a little tank, a little cage that you can barely move around in. Okay, a phone booth. Imagine a phone booth.
You’re probably too young to even know what a phone booth is. I’m kidding. Do you know what a phone booth is?
UCI: I – I do, yes. I can picture it perfectly.
Caller: Okay, well, imagine us in a cage with a – with like a lock on it. Okay, and that’s what they put inmates who commit self-mutilation or who are suicidal.
