This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Tehachapi.
Being inside a prison during the age of COVID has been like nothing I ever experienced before. I really can’t compare it to anything. The phone company that provides service for the prison has been giving us free phone calls on certain days, so that’s cool. And recently, me and bunch of other inmates got three months knocked off our sentence for good behavior during these rough times. It felt good to get the time reduction, but at the same time I felt bad because of the circumstances of everything. Like thousands of people had to die from a virus in order for me to get the three months knocked off my sentence. I didn’t really do anything to earn it. I just wish it came under different circumstances, that’s all.
Most of my days are spent inside of my cell reading books, and doing GED homework that gets sent to my cell. I don’t have a radio or TV at the moment, so I don’t know what’s going on out there in the world. Sometimes, I get extremely bored. The books help with that. I can’t physical go to the library because of COVID restrictions, so I use the half-decent book system they have, that consist of a bunch of authors and book titles and bar codes. I say it’s half-decent because it takes a week to receive your book. And then when your done it’s not like you could return it yourself, you have to wait for library people to come get it. And then you could only get one book. I’m done with that book in two days. So yeah I said half-decent but that might be too much praise.
As I write this letter, a nurse just came by doing temperature checks. It seems like the building I live in is going on a quarantine again. Some inmates are testing positive, so they’re gonna be moving to the isolation building. Everyday something new up here, you never know what’s gonna happen next.
