This letter was written by a person incarcerated at High Desert.
I pray this reaches you and those closest to you safe and doing well in this new year. Thank you for reaching out to me! My experience during this pandemic has been very depressing and anxiety triggering.
Around March 2020, is when the prison I was at went on modified program or COVID lockdown and stopped visits. I had just got to that prison (CSP Corcoran) six months (or so) prior to that and I had just received my first visit from my kids and their mother the weekend before the lockdown. Despite the rest of the state being closed, I and other inmates were transferred off that yard and sent to other prisons. I am from [redacted] and that is where my children and mother stay.
So it was not a ride around the corner for me to get visits while I was at Corcoran, but my family managed. I was then transferred to High Desert State Prison (Susanville, California) despite it being too far to receive visits, being in college at the time, and participating in various mental and self help groups (such as CGA), I was sent up here. Before I was transferred my kids and their mother got COVID and I couldn’t even call.
That was maybe the most stressful and worried I have been my entire 10 years of incarceration. I have been here at HDSP for over six months and they will not honor the hardship that being so far from my family has created.
