This story was told by a person incarcerated at Avenal.
Caller: COVID’s been, COVID’s been horrible here. When it first launched, when COVID first hit here, we were just locked in our building and pretty much confined to our dorms for roughly about a year. We literally only had access to the bathrooms and the showers, and minimal contact on the phones. Our visitations have been completely pulled.
Just recently, within the last few months, CDCR has tried to implement visitation. So, they do video visits now which is done on the internet, which is pretty cool. That’s actually helpful.
But, you only get an hour. And then, your contact visits are on Sundays and they’re only for two hours, which, you know, is hard for 99 percent of the population here. Just simply that, you know, not all of our families live right down the street. So, like, you know, my family comes from five and a half hours away and they have to drive five and a half hours for a two hour visit, and it’s just, it’s just too much.
So, you know, I haven’t even had a visit. I haven’t seen my family since the very beginning of COVID. We were restricted to yard every day. We did get yard every day, only for two hours, and it was only by ourselves. We couldn’t go out. We usually go to the yard with three other buildings.
We ate chow by ourselves. All programs were cut off. All school, all vocations, all self-help. And then, you know, as, as of about three months ago we started to open up slowly. You know, they did give us our shots. Everyone got their – well, it was optional. Most people got their vaccines.
Two people died in my building with COVID. We have a population of about 150 guys in my building, two people for sure died. It’s been rough. You know, the food was bad. You know, it’s been bad, the whole situation.
You know, the governor gave us, I think he gave us 12 weeks off of our sentence just pretty much for doing time during the COVID pandemic.
