This story was told by a person incarcerated at Soledad.
Caller: Okay so I’m at Soledad. We started our COVID protocol in March of 2020. From that date forward, inmates were not allowed out of their cell, more than 100- more than three hours a week and that includes your shower time.
If you have a job where you work in the culinary or you work in the laundry, you’re working double shifts. They’re working 16 hours a day, with no extra pay, nothing extra. They still only get three hours of yard if they get it, if they miss it, they don’t make it up.
Laundry is not done every week. Sometimes laundry is done every other week. All the disinfectant that they provide is watered down or diluted to the lowest level of potency available. It’s not even potent, they give you better disinfectant for the common cold.
The officers are doing less work now than they were doing when we were there. They’re feeding us late, they give us cold food, we have to beg for toilet paper and soap. We have to- like right now is my shower time, I had to beg to get out to get a shower. They’re spending more time kicking back than they’re doing their jobs.
We are actually being punished for a national pandemic. There was a period of three weeks where the television system- we have Direct TV here for local television, went out. We had no television for three weeks in a cell and that was the period of time where we didn’t even get yard.
Packages just started to catch up, they’re still 30 days behind. Canteen, there was a period of time where people weren’t getting into canteen for three and four months. You’re supposed to get in every month. So that’s your food, your hygiene, anything that you buy in there, and your family has to send in money.
They started video visits. They only let a select few of people go to video visits. Not everybody qualifies ’cause they want you to have COVID before you can go to a video visit.
I’ve never had COVID. I’ve never tested positive. I’ve been subjected to more psychological abuse, trauma. We had 40 weeks of cold food in CDC in the year 2020.
The other thing they do is they move people around that are infected and they keep reinfecting other people. That’s why the COVID numbers are up. At this prison we have 16 inmates that died, I knew 12 of them. We also had four officers die.
The management team here sucks. You tell them something, it takes them three weeks to react. It doesn’t matter if they’re a captain, a AW, a warden, everybody’s got an excuse for why we’re suffering here.
The only thing that we benefitted from was the stimulus check. And you can’t even spend that money cause you can’t even get in the store. We ask for hygiene supplies, they tell us, “Oh we put in a order.” Our sheets haven’t been washed in a month, our blankets in three to four months.
Some people come in here, oh they are doing transportation moves from other places. Guys that went out to court, they’re putting them in prisons that are not even the prisons they were endorsed. So their property is sitting at another prison while they’re over here.
It’s just a lot of bad management. Some things are real simple. They test you three or four times a week. You ask for the results, you can’t even get them.
Then when you beg maybe five months down the road, they may give you some results. They temperature check you. When they temperature check you, you ask them questions, they tell you they can’t even answer any questions.
For the most part, people are surviving in here. But there’s guys kicking on the doors all night because they can’t either get canteen, or their showers, or something they need. These guys think it’s a joke. This is a serious situation here.
And I think the Senate oversight committee and also the assembly oversight committee needs to come down and personally inspect this place, unannounced, and see what they’re actually doing here. They put people out in tents that were infected, the wind blew, and the tents almost lifted off the ground. The porta-potties they had, they all fell over.
These guys are put on a yard, on a field, and they’re COVID positive. It’s like they don’t even care how they do these guys in here. This is not humanism. So it’s crazy.
I mean I know Gavin Newsom is a positive guy, but this lady Kathleen Allison, man, if she’s managing the prison system, we were way better with Ralph Diaz. At least he would be down here trying to do something- or send a strike team down here. We need a strike team at Soledad and at Salinas Valley. It’s just it’s really stressful ’cause you don’t know what’s gonna happen.
Everyday there’s some change. They’re either gonna move you or some people die or it- I mean you never know what you’re gonna get. They vaccinated all the police and all the staff. Where’s the vaccine for the inmates?
Inmates are sitting around here, they doing all this work, they can’t even get a vaccine. It’s sad. I have a strong proposition, and I read and stuff like that, but it’s sad to see people suffer in here like this.
It- I mean, if you can communicate, you can communicate, but it’s like you’re not being heard. I mean there was a guy in my building, he kicked the door all night long. We told them what the issue was, the police said, “Oh well, you know it don’t bother me.” I said, “Man, he’s not in here, he’s not even in here doing more than 90 days and you guys are just letting this guy kick the doors? You guys need to check on him, man.”
We had a guy try to commit suicide in here, in one of these buildings I’m in. And then in the other one, the guy actually did it. So, you know, suicide rates are up in here. Normally we don’t have any of that stuff happening here. So.
UCI: Wow-
Caller: Pretty much, in a nutshell. And also for them to put in cameras in all the prisons, everywhere. If there’s nothing going on in here and there’s nothing to hide, put the cameras in all the prisons. They’re putting them in San Diego, put them in every single prison.
16 billion dollars got spent this year. Inmates don’t have no programs at all. There’s no self-help, there’s no invocation, there’s no vocation. They got 16 billion dollars, there is- they got video visiting through an app, that don’t cost no manpower, there’s nobody supervising that.
UCI: Wow. How has the COVID-19 situation at your facility affected your loved ones?
Caller: Well we haven’t seen our family. They only allow video visiting if you had COVID and you got a resolved case. Say there’s about 2,000 people that never got COVID, they can’t go use that app. It’s in the library, they can’t go in there.
They punish them because they never had COVID. When I say they got 16 billion dollars this year and we didn’t get no programs, I’m telling you I mean there’s no education, there’s no library, there’s no rehabilitative classes.
They are not letting us do anything, they’re not even doing independent study. So they’re- I mean guys are gonna spend more time, ’cause you have to do things to get time off your sentence. That’s how they give you time credits, you have to either get a GED, or get a high school diploma, or go to a vocation.
So guys are gonna be stuck in here an extra four months, every year this COVID thing is going on cause they can’t get their time credits. And that was part of the Prop 57.
