This story was told by a person incarcerated at Corcoran.
Caller: Well, right now, we’re off lockdown. But it’s a yard with five buildings. One of them is an ad seg building. And the ad seg building is quarantined because they got people in there that tested positive due to some staff still coming to work that were tested positive. And we have another building – building one is on quarantine for the same purposes. A couple inmates tested positive due to some staff in there who was affected.
And, when they locked us down, it was because they had initially said 16 COs tested positive for the virus. But the problem with that is they let the COs – when they test – if they’re feeling no symptoms, they can come back to work five days away from the facility and still have the virus. So, of course, it spreads a lot quicker that way. Because you don’t know what inmates they come in contact with.
But, for those inmates that did have jobs, they were the only ones that got tested. So, right now, that’s the current status. But, since this virus has hit, it’s been real bad here, in Corcoran.
UCI: Right. I was curious on what is troubling or concerning to you.
Caller: Well, to me, it’s the way they operate. You know, they had this whole yard locked down. And they were testing all inmates.
And every inmate that tested positive, they were trying to move them to the buildings where the most inmates were that tested positive. That didn’t work. It was like a domino effect. It was like other inmates started getting affected who weren’t necessarily affected. So, then, they cleared out a few buildings on the old SHU yard, and they started putting people over there who was tested. And a few people were hospitalized. Once people were negative, they’ll bring them back to the yard.
And they were doing that on all three yards. So it’s troubling because, when you don’t have it, there’s a chance you can get it by them doing it like that. And it’s all about when your test result comes back. If you don’t have it and your cellmate tests positive, nine times out of 10, when they test you again, you’re going to be the one positive. So they weren’t really doing nothing to separate people to a point where the virus couldn’t spread.
It was like they were trying to minimize it, but they really didn’t know how. And then, they were – the staff was being careless theirself. They weren’t really testing in society, like they should. Neither were the free staff and neither were the nurses and stuff like that. So, I guess, once a lot of inmates got negative, then, some of them came back positive. And it’s just been up and down since about March.
