This story was told by a person incarcerated at Fresno County Jail.
UCI: What has it been like for you? Mentally, emotionally?
Caller: I’m mentally stressed out because dealing with courts and dealing with the COVID situation, how the courts go over the time limits that they’re supposed to go over. And you know, you’re supposed to be able to be, they use 30-day extensions. They just use a lot of extensions on these court dates due to COVID and just stuff like that.
UCI: Mmhmm and –
Caller: Not being able to see your family. You can’t get visits. They took our phone calls, our free phone calls away, so you’re not able to call your family anymore or see them when you’re down on a quarantine pod and stuff, so.
UCI: And there’s no options for virtual visitation and programming?
Caller: No. No, there’s not. No, no visits. No visiting. Just – we used to get free phone calls, but they cut those off.
UCI: Wow.
Caller: Yeah.
UCI: I’m sorry to hear that.
Caller: Yeah.
UCI: And what would have made the situation at your facility better?
Caller: For us to be able to contact our families, to see our families. Maybe to separate quarantine people from the people who are already vaccinated. To get the ball rolling on people’s court dates so that they could get, they could get, you know, get seen and get out of here or go home to their families.
Even like, even for the medical to be even better, you know? Even clean wise, like to have the right cleaning materials and stuff like that.
