This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Orange County Central Men’s Jail.
By the way, I turned in many medical slips and dental. My gums were bleeding and I had no toothbrush. My body started to have much worse health problems that they referred to as a “serious health condition”, but their answer was to wake me at 3 am to drink Gatorade. I don’t know any other healthcare that does that. After the third time, I was able to get them to stop as it was giving me dizziness, chest pains, and a racing heart.
The concrete walls and floors of this place seem to suck the heat out of your body. After three weeks of cold sack lunches three times a day, the cold temperatures, and odd hours they wake us up; my body feels very beaten by those conditions. I’ve lost 30 lbs in my depression.
My interactions with the court seem like something out of a Kafta novel as it is apparent we’ve lost certain liberties in the legal proceedings due to the crisis. For starters I barely could hear my arraignment over the iPad, but I guess my bail went from 25,000 to 125,000. My second court “appearance” didn’t even happen as they waived it or something. I’m out of the loop.
Everyone and everything is not operating well over these restrictive circumstances and unfortunately, inmates are affected the worst of all by the changes. No hot meals at all for four and a half months. Maybe one visit a month from your people.
My neighbor claimed he has to have his attorney/client visit in a small room with another inmate and his attorney. His attorney whispered until they left. Many actions that you really can’t question in this state of emergency.
As for me, I’m in the worst place in my life. The stress of the last year has put a strain on my family and being out of work has been hard for me. For some reason, my EDD benefits stopped after one payment after I mentioned head injuries. They put me in a disability category, so now I get neither EDD nor disability.
I did get to go outside to the roof a couple days ago. First sunlight I saw in weeks. It was nice. Thankful for the small things.