This story was told by a person incarcerated at Chino.
UCI: And what is it, what is it been like for you to have reduced visitation and programming?
Caller: Well, we don’t have any visitations at all. As of March, there’s no visitation at all. Programming is kind of a big learning curve for us cause I know we know we’re in prison and kind of expecting certain things. But yeah, as far as the visitation there had been no visitations at all.
They just started about two weeks ago doing video conferencing. And that’s barely that they have to start working out because I heard there were some problems with that. I haven’t tried it out myself. But they get Nextel. They’ve been offering free phone calls twice a month.
So, people will jump on that quite a bit. But it’s kind of hard to not be able to see family members, like, for me, for myself I have an elderly father. He’s in his upper 80s and, you know, I wouldn’t want him to come anyways but if this doesn’t get resolved then I don’t get a chance to see him anymore.
And that’s why I’m actually calling because when I got the letters like, you don’t think about things like that until somebody actually points it out. It’s like, if this thing doesn’t get under control, within a certain amount of time, then I might not get a chance to see him. I mean, I feel like it hurts but other than that it’s just something that you’ve learned to live with, I believe.
UCI: And how has the COVID-19 situation at your facility affected your, your father or your other loved ones?
Caller: As far as outside family, nobody has gone infected. Other than in here, I’m the only one from my family that I know that has gotten infected. Everybody, he’s like I said elderly but he’s stubborn, just like a lot of other people’s parents.
He doesn’t want to, he’s tired of being inside so he tries to go outside to sneak out and family members tries to take him everything, so he won’t. But it’s affecting us quite a bit, but you know they’re doing what they can I guess. He is the father and it’s kind of hard to tell him what to do.
