This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Soledad.
Hello. First I’d like to thank you all for your thoughtful words of encouragement during these critical times, hard to deal with, which have befallen us all.
Then I’d like to jump straight into sharing my experiences in regards to how CDCR has been dealing with us and our loved ones during the COVID-19 pandemic, or how they have failed to deal with us and our loved ones during the pandemic.
Being in prison at any time is a dreadful thing because it’s a place where each day is filled with so many uncertainties, but life during the pandemic has been a total conundrum. We’ve entered a very dark period behind these walls due to the pandemic.
At the very onset of the pandemic, there were no major modifications made to our program to protect us from COVID-19. There was no PPE, no social distancing being enforced. The disinfecting and cleaning chemicals that we did receive were watered down.
The only so-called precautionary measures taken here at CTF was the facility stopping non-essential civilians from mixing in with the prison population. This meant that teachers, college proctors, group facilitators, and visitors weren’t allowed to intermix with us. Our main roads and connections to recovery and rehabilitation had been severed. Everything that kept our systems going, shut down.
Correctional officers, cooks, commissary or canteen managers, everybody that it takes to keep their system going, were all still allowed to come in and mingle amongst us without masks or facial coverings, without social distancing, and without being tested.
This worried the inmate population very much because, we knew that the only way we would contract COVID-19 is if it were brought into us by someone going to the outside and coming back into the prison.
So we used the grievance process to voice our complaints and issues, but CDCR either denied our complaints as non-valid or partially granted some, while they scrambled to make necessary adjustments and passing out masks.
I was especially concerned about the safety of those who, like myself, have underlying conditions that can lead to complications or death, and elderly. I worry mainly because I know firsthand how deliberately indifferent CDCR can be when it comes to the health and safety of the prisoners within its facilities.
In 2010, I was transferred to Pleasant Valley State Prison where I immediately contracted coccidioidomycosis (or valley fever).
Pleasant Valley State Prison is located in Coalinga, California, which, is a known hotspot for valley fever which, African-Americans, Asians, and those with underlying conditions contract and suffer from at higher and more alarming rates. I’m African-American and I have asthma and should not have been housed there.
All of these facts were known to CDCR and yet, I and others like myself continue to be loaded up and shipped there. This, among other things, I have seen done behind these walls is why I am so overly concerned during the COVID-19 pandemic.
I know personally that CDCR has shown and continues to show a blatant disregard for human life. I myself didn’t have a lot of visitors before the pandemic. I’ve managed to maintain a strong, healthy bond with my family and loved ones by phone and by way of mail.
I can definitely see the effect it has had on those who have had their visiting reduced to none at all. Unfortunately, there is a lot more stress and anxiety in here, and like with COVID-19, stress and anxiety seem to be contagious in this closed-in environment.
Some of the facilities have video visits set up and/or they have these Jpay tablets that when standing next to kiosks inmates can send or receive 30 second videos to and from their loved ones. This facility is so old, outdated, and run down it isn’t even set up for either of the two.
Phone calls come once in a great while in this facility because the phones are outside on the yard and since we don’t have the yard privilege right now, we have to wait for them to approve phone calls. So trying to maintain a healthy relationship with loved ones on the outside has become more challenging.
A few months ago, an inmate here ended his own life. I watched them bring him outside of his cell with the material that he had used still tied around his neck. People are definitely dealing with the pandemic in different ways.
A lot of inmates that I worked with in the culinary tested positive for COVID-19. They have quarantine buildings for those individuals who test positive. From what I hear, a couple of them have actually had to go to outside hospitals due to underlying conditions.
I’ve been coping with this crisis thus far, but, I sometimes wonder, how long will it be before I have to go to an outside hospital and have a ventilator tube shoved down my throat in order to breathe? I get curious as to who’s going to be the CO or nurse to bring it into me.
Now because there are so many staff out sick, there are days when there is only one CO in the building who has to handle the feeding, which seems to come later and later each day. The food portions have gotten smaller. I sometimes wonder where my next meal is going to come from, if it comes at all.
We haven’t been able to shop at commissary due to the staff shortage, we are being told. So a lot of us are barely getting by on the meager rations that come to the door, which I am grateful for and count as a blessing because it can be a lot worse. I’ve watched a docu-series, “Locked Up Abroad” and there was a prison in Russia, I believe it was called The Blue Dolphin or Black Dolphin, but they were suffering a pandemic before the COVID-19 pandemic.
I feel that the 33 prisons in California are 33 sacrifice zones where the system is tucking away all of the black and brown individuals who it has kidnapped off of the street. I don’t believe CDCR had any intentions on rehabilitating any inmates when they added the “R” onto CDC. I believe that it was just another ploy that they’ve used to generate more millions.
There was a statement that was made by someone who was employed by CCR that I’ve never forgotten. In fact I admire her for her courage. Her name was. She was a sponsor of a program at San Quentin. She said, “If a person gets rehabilitated here, it takes a lot of work. It’s not something that the state makes easy. It seems at times that the state is in the way more times than they are positive factors.” That was the truest thing I had ever heard anyone “on the inside” say about its employer. And it’s the obvious and evident, yet, it hasn’t changed.
During this pandemic, there have been a lot of inmates positively programming without any bad behavior or write ups, inmates who are showing clear evidence of “rehabilitation” but yet, CDCR doesn’t want to release them. Violent inmates and non-violent inmates alike are showing clear signs of being rehabilitated. CDCR doesn’t view them that way because they are unwilling to release these inmates, even when it means life or death.
So, which is it? Do they really believe that an inmate, whether violent or non-violent, can truly be rehabilitated? Or, is the “R” that sits at the back of the CDC, only really a hook to pull in lots of money to set up these fake programs, so that they can fake like they are rehabilitating inmates, when in reality, they are splitting the pot?
I know that by now, you know my thoughts in regards to these questions. We on the inside of the walls have our own denotation for those four letters, CDCR, California Department of Corruption and Racketeering.
Well team, I think that there should be enough for now. I look forward to writing again in the future. I have so much to say when it comes to this broken system. I also express myself through artwork, so I’ll be in touch.
Also, I’d rather you use my name and number when you post my story and my address in case anyone else would like to hear me reiterate these accounts and many more.
Thank you. Please, stay strong and safe. God bless you.
The change needed in our prison systems can’t come quick enough!!
