This story was told by a person incarcerated at New Folsom.
Caller: Oh, well, we’ve been in lockdown a lot. They’d kind of shut the program down basically for security reasons and health reasons. They were, in a way everybody just wondering – well, at the beginning wondering what was going to happen, what was going on, you know. So, we were just posted, I guess, all the prisoners, on the news. We have a TV in here, I mean, that we watch and we were just concerned for our people, our family members.
They came up with this idea that they would give us – everybody – a phone call, a free phone call, for those prisoners that can’t afford to make a collect call. So, they can call their family members a week, and basically kind of help prisoners a lot because they were able to call their people and find out how they’re doing, how their parents are doing.
I was personally concerned about my parents because they’re older. They’re, you know, over 60. And it was more dangerous for them, according to the news. Me, myself, well, I wasn’t really too concerned about myself because I been through a lot of stuff, and I basically was just being positive and being strong.
Just doing exercise and trying to be strong. But it was kind of worrying of other – it was kind of other people out there just being sick, getting sick and dying and stuff, you know.
UCI: Yeah, absolutely. At the beginning of the pandemic, were your parents notified of any changes, or was it kind of all of a sudden? You know, how did that affect them?
Caller: No, they really were not notified, they were just keeping track. I guess that’s why they gave us our phone calls for, so that we could alert them, let them know what’s going on. My mom, as usual, I mean, she was concerned about us having masks in here. She wanted to send me a mask in the mail or something.
I said, no, that’s not allowed in prison. I said, “Don’t worry. They were giving us masks.” At first, I mean, everybody was just using a cloth. I mean, basically, that was a made-up mask that I guess they made, like, just with a rubber band and a piece of a cotton cloth.
But, I mean, it was working. But then they started bringing in the N95 masks after some weeks after that. And in reality, to be honest, here in Sacramento, they did a good job in containing the virus because there were, reportedly, a few staff that got infected, and right away, they didn’t let them come in to work.
