This story was told by a person incarcerated at John Latorraca Correctional Center.
UCI: Do you think if you were able to see your loved ones more, would – do you think it would have helped coping with the crisis? Or how have you been coping with the crisis?
Caller: Well, everything is over the phone. And my family – I have six kids. I just had a baby girl. And I’m not blaming the county or anybody for why I’m in here.
It’s my fault for whatever I’m in here for, right? And that’s fine. And well it’s a little hard because my wife wants to come see me, and I mean, it’s tough on her because she has to take care of all the kids and do everything that I was doing before I came in.
And it’s – it’s real hard because just seeing her would be nice. You know, see her, you know, smile or something like that. It would put me at ease and relaxing me, instead of having me all stressed out. And not worrying, you know what I mean, it’s bad enough that I can’t see my family.
Now I can’t see my lawyer. I mean, they just have us boxed in a little cage. I mean, they don’t treat us bad or anything like that. We get our food, we get to eat, we get our canteen.
But we just have no contact with the outside world, really, except for these phone calls but – and they give you that one five-minute phone call. Man, there’s some people that don’t have money and they don’t have the opportunity or the luxury to be calling whenever they need to.
And I think that – I mean, at least imagine what they’re going through. At least my wife is, I’ve been blessed that, you know, God gave me – gave us a little bit extra change so I could put it on the phone. To talk to her at least, I put like a dollar a day sometimes, just to say, “I love you and good morning.”
That way, we could have some type of, you know, contact that we usually have. But I mean, there’s a lot of people in here that don’t have that. It’s – it can be real stressful, especially when some people are looking at five, six years. And they can’t even get, you know, “Hi, Mom,” or, “How are you doing?”
Or their family. And their family be able to, you know, just don’t have money to put money on the phones. But they could come visit them. But they can’t now. They can’t even do that.
UCI: Has your facility offered any sort of protection, like a mask or a glass window, to at least see family?
Caller: That’s what kind of visits are here, it’s behind the glass. It’s been like that before the, before the – before the epidemic hit. It’s always been like that, behind the glass, because whatever reasons the facility has. There’s no contact visits here.
UCI: Do you think if your facility allowed a contact visit it would have made the situation better?
Caller: Just a visit, period, even through Zoom would be fine. Just to be able to see your loved ones and talk to them more than like, you know, a couple minutes and that’s it. I mean, there’s a lot of things that you need to talk to them about.
Oh, what’s going on in the streets and what’s going on with your kids. You know, are they okay? And especially now that all those orders that came out with the president that he started yesterday, and the mandatory shots. I mean, it’s crazy, depending on your beliefs.