This story was told by a person incarcerated at Elmwood Correctional Facility.
UCI: What has it been like for you to have reduced visitation and programming?
Caller: The visitations – oh, that would probably be the most horrible. My mom actually tried to have – I mean one was on her part, you know, she said – she thought it was at 10 a.m. I should’ve figured and said visits weren’t in the morning, but I didn’t know. I haven’t been here very often like – like I’ve stated.
But she – I guess we’re supposed to come at 10:30 that night. So, she came at 10:30 at night and they said, you know, that it’s too transparent, her shirt. I mean my mom isn’t gonna, you know, flirt with her son, you know, and stuff like that.
She’s – it was like the same color, you know, it was just the trim. I mean she doesn’t dress all nonchalant, you know. All showy and stuff.
She’s not like that. They told her to go away and make another one. So, she made another one.
We finally got a visitation. And my mom’s pretty old, so she’s – now she had to drive in the night. She’s, you know, she doesn’t like driving in the night.
It’s so far. She lives all the way in the south. And, you know, this is kind of a far drive to be driving at night.
And she’s not really familiar with all the, you know, the jail system and stuff. Neither am I. But, so we got the visit that night.
The next following week. And we – there’s four different rooms, so we get in the room, and the phone doesn’t even work. I tried it multiple times.
And then you have to hold the phone wire at a couple angles. And it cuts out. So, we were yelling through the glass at each other.
Like hey, yeah, you know, conversating like that. And then at the – at the end, you know, we were tired. We were like oh my gosh, this is irritating.
And then our 30 minutes was up. And I went back to my – my unit. So, that’s how that goes.
Other people say, you know, their visit, it was called off, you know. Mail, you know, the sheet was too big. There’s too much blank spot in the paper. I mean I understand how that works.
There could be, you know, paraphernalia brought in through like that. But, I mean, people are happy for one thing and then something completely, you know, brings that down because of something that’s so little when they should be focusing on something a lot bigger.
UCI: Yeah.
Caller: So, yeah that’s – that’s pretty much all that.
UCI: You also mentioned earlier on that you guys had gotten tablets. By any chance, have they introduced any kind of video calls or anything like that where you can reach out to your family like that?
Caller: The video calls – the video calls, no, there’s no video calls. But there is Global Tel-link that helps out with the – the phone calls.
Now you can only make it when you have headphones. Now when I got the headphones, I bought ’em on commissary, and finally I wasn’t able to – nobody knew I was incarcerated for two weeks. I wasn’t able to make a phone call.
Yeah, about two weeks. Because I mean if court came a week and a half after that, I was finally, yeah. So, I finally got the headphones. And I tried making [unintelligible] it is like down a tunnel.
I can make out no words of what the other person on the other line was saying. It was so down-a-tunnel type of situation. So, I made it out of like “Hey mom, are you able to hear me?” and she said I can make out the word “Yes”.
So, I say okay, I’m going to tell you where I am, you know, this is what’s going on. As long as you’re able to hear me, you know, I – and, you know, just clarification that she’s able to hear me at least. And that’s how that went. The connection is so bad.
