This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Stockton.
I was incarcerated at a California Correctional Center, Susanville, facility when the pandemic hit. Not really understanding what COVID-19 was, I and many of my fellow convicts weren’t too concerned and some of us had been pretty sick in the past flu season. So we felt we probably already had COVID-19 and didn’t know it. That wasn’t COVID-19. COVID-19 proved to be far worse as I later found out.
The anxieties kicked in for those who got a visit when the president stopped all visitation. I saw how sad, frustrating, and angry those convicts got. I didn’t get visits, but I understood how they were feeling. My anxieties kicked in when they started moving all the beds to make sure all the dorms had 24 convicts instead of 32.
It was frustrating because just when you were able to build a rapport and respect with the convicts in the dorm you were moved to another dorm. I moved four times in six months. And what was frustrating was that we were told it was due to making sure we were six feet apart, but on one side of me in the bunk area, I was still able to hold my neighbors hand when I went to sleep if I chose to, because the banks were so close.
If our health and lives were really that important to the prison system, then every other bank should have been emptied. The gym could’ve been utilized. It’s not like they hadn’t had convicts housed there before.
