This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Soledad.
1/10/21
Peace be unto you good people of UC Irvine,
It is my most sincere desire my short letter find you students, teacher’s and professors. I don’t know exactly what you are doing but I think you are in the process of collecting data. Which is good. At one point there is going to be a study or a history of this pandemic (Trump’s Pandemic).
The administration here is just as bad.
My intention was to write on December when I found out about you guys, but I’m glad I waited. Fortunately I was able to collect more information. I’m sure that in the not-too-distant future, the story about how the Trump Pandemic effected and affected the prison’s vast, multi-ethnic, impoverished population.
I’m confident you can get this prison’s (CTF, Soledad, Est. 1946) physical layout via the Freedom of Information Act (FIA) or internet. Of course the prison itself doesn’t give prisoners much information so I’ve cobbled together some facts from local TV news, daily program status reports (PSR).
In late March of 2020 to mid-April all programs, education, and visiting were stopped. All the N95 masks used in vocation spaces, plant operations, institutional support, and PIA were confiscated for staff who were short of PPE. We never saw them on the prison guards or supervisors. Guess the N95 masks went to medical staff.
PIA textiles started making masks out of jumpsuit material with elastic to pull around our ears.
Throughout summer and early fall wings would go on and off quarantine. Due to if a prisoner tested positive. The gym and both chapels were made into isolation units with bunks. Up until November 2020 we lost three or four prisoners and one staff.
On November 9th we went on total lockdown (quarantine). Testing has gone up by 12/23/20 according to KION news, channel 5/46 at 11 pm, there are 829 infected prisoners, with seven dead, and 80 staff infected with two dead.
Within Z wing, we shower every five to seven days. We have 60 to 70 minutes on the rec yard. Currently there are over 400 cases at Central Facility, with G-wing, gym dorm (as SNY Sensitive Needs Yard, i.e. Protective Custody), both chapels one and two. The yard now has 12 eight-man tents on yard with half dozen porta-potties and two shower trucks.
At North Facility all 12 tents are full (96 men with COVID-19). Z-wing has gone to rec yard twice a month and those prisoners who have continually tested negative (“Sofia 2” SARS antigen F1D test not a PCR) don’t go to work. Only those who have tested positive and/or recovered from the disease.
Those assigned to PIA who’ve tested positive cannot test again for another 90-120 days. Since the staff, who up to last month have been wearing home-made masks, bandanas, and scarves, now everyone must wear foreign made N95 masks. Essentially, the staff and prison guards have infected over 1500 men, 12 are dead, and the hospital is full.
The only thing I ask is that you send me a postcard and letter informing me if and when you received this letter.
News from the front: I was informed by a prisoner who had COVID-19, then being termed “resolved” after a quarantine period moved to my wing. In which we in zebra wing have not had an active case in a month. The reason PIA has got a few of the workers back is because of the contracts for furniture wherein each desk costs $650 to $1,200 each, and all wooden chairs going to state mental hospitals at about $600.00 each.
By having a handful of workers who’ve already been infected, gets the onus of responsibility of the continued spread of the virus off the shoulders of the staff and maintain prisoner labor.
Interesting factoid: Between 1852 to 1965 (113 years) the state build 12 prisons in California. Yet, between 1982 and the end of the millennium another 24 prisons were built (see, Joan Petersilia, “Crime and Punishment in California: Full Cells, Empty Pockets, and Questionable Benefits” page 179) for a total of 36 in less than 20 years. Meanwhile, of the 15 Cal State Universities, Monterrey Bay (founded in 1994) was last.
And of the eight University of California, both your guys at Irvine and Santa Cruz were both founded last in 1965.
All prisons of California are overcrowded – in the middle of a world-wide pandemic! The same can’t be said of the state’s universities. Be sure and hit me back. Thanks for listening. Of course positive negative test do not apply to state employees.
