This story was told by a person incarcerated at Solano.
Caller: I’d like to see, I’d like to see cameras in the facility, I’d like to see public interaction in the facility, I’d like to see academics having access to the isolationism, to the authoritarianism that we suffer through here.
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: Cause, we’re isolated! And whenever you- just the mechanism for abuse is isolationism, so we’re people’s grandfathers, uncles, cousins, brothers, and sons – and the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is isolating us from our families and from the public and from society, and it’s the mechanism for abuse! And that’s exactly what they’re doing!
UCI: Yes.
Caller: They’re isolating us and then they’re abusing us. And now we don’t have- we can’t visit our families, we have limited telephone calls, and I’d like to see more outside participation from the public who- and this is the irony in this Simrit, is the public pays for these, this place.
UCI: Right.
Caller: This is a public funded prison.
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: These guards are paid by taxpayers but yet, the public entity, the public, people can’t come into the prison! They don’t give them access, so if the public doesn’t have access to something that they’re paying for that’s, you know, just asking for trouble and it’s just no oversight.
UCI: Right.
Caller: When you have no oversight, they can just basically do what they want to do and when they write the report, anyway they wanna write the report and it sticks!
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: They’re law enforcement! They get the benefit of the doubt, they get the benefit of professional courtesy and it’s just not right!
UCI: Right.
Caller: Well to answer that question, more public intervention, more cameras, more news media, more intellectuals, more academics, more psychiatrists, and psychology majors and students in here to saturate this place and bring some attention to what they’re doing here.
