This story was told by a person incarcerated at New Folsom.
Caller: I’m back pleading with God again. I’m like, man, I just need another chance. But then, by this time, they locked the prisons down. You know, we’ve been on lockdown for, like, a whole year now.
Not like a total lockdown, like, you don’t come out, but, like, use the phone, use the shower, and that’s it. I mean, sometime we able to go outside, but that means we have to be on the yellow tier or the orange tier. One of those tiers that’s less moderate, you know.
And it got to the point where, you know, I broke down, you know, I was crying just today, you know, just saying a prayer. Man, you know, I know that God knows that I know he real. And I told him I know you’re real, I know it’s in my mind, I know it’s in my heart.
So, you know, this experience and many other ones like it, you know, it’s driven me into, you know, not only telling my story but maybe telling somebody else or helping somebody else get they’re story out. So, the more stories we get out, the more the world sees us as a whole instead of being divided in prison.
Like a whole. It’s a congregation of people trying to accomplish a mission that’s positive. And that starts with conversations like these.
UCI: Mm-hmm. Well, I do appreciate you calling and tell us your story. I really do. Thank you so much for calling.
So, you mentioned that you were only allowed to go out to go to the shower and to make phone calls. Is that still what’s happening or are you able to go out more now?
Caller: A little bit more now because of the vaccine shots, you know. All last year it’s been like one of those sit down and, you know, we can’t allow you guys to go to the yard, go outside and be around each other because they didn’t know nothing about the vaccine. They didn’t have a formula or nothing to, you know, give us no information about how to deal with this.
So, yeah, it’s pretty much we on and off, you know. If there’s a case, if somebody catches it we’re locked back down for two weeks, 14 days or 10 days, and then we off again after that person is tested negative. So, right now, I think we’re all vaccinated at this prison, so there’s not a lot of COVID-19 popping up. So, that’s a good thing.
So, you know, we got a couple more days on lockdown because they’re doing a wide world search. And so, when that’s up we’ll be able to go outside and we have our full groups, our classes, we’ll be able to do all the things we were doing before this happened.
UCI: Will you be able to have visitations again when that happens, or are those still pushed until further notice?
Caller: That I do not know, but I do know that certain prisons are letting some inmates use the video recorder, like a Skype or Facetime recording thing with their families.
