This story was told by a person incarcerated at New Folsom.
UCI: How? I want to know how do you cope with all this during the pandemic?
Caller: I write music, I write lyrics, I write songs, I write poetry. You know, I’m trying to get in contact. I’m trying to find a pen pal program so I can write to different people in certain areas because a lot of people are curious about prison, so I like to write people who is curious about prison.
So I can give them kind of a perspective/outlook on prison life. ‘Cause they don’t allow volunteers to come in this prison and level four, maybe on a lower, the lower level prisons like level one and two or San Quentin. Have you ever heard of San Quentin?
UCI: Never. What is that?
Caller: San Quentin is located in the Bay Area. They have a lot of programs there. You know, they allow people from the outside. You can sign up to get a walk-through of the prison chaperoned.
You can walk through the prison and talk to inmates and walk around the prison and see how it looks. They don’t do that here. This is a level four prison, so they don’t that here they don’t allow volunteers to walk through here.
So, my goal is to find pen pals and give them – my goal is to find a lot of pen pals and let them know what goes on in prison. Because these stories are never really told really. You know what I am saying?
They don’t tell, you know, if you hear if you’re watching Fox News and you hear there was a murder of an inmate, ’cause someone just got killed the other day. He was found dead in his cell just the other day.
UCI: Wow.
Caller: Last week. Right, it was on the news, but they didn’t say much about it. They didn’t say it was only like a flash, you know, it was like a flash. They just spoke about it real quick, and that was that.
They don’t know what circumstances behind it. They don’t know if a corrupt cops was behind it. You know, no one gets the inside scoop of things. So the fact I’m in here, so I know prison like I know the Bible, front to back.
