This story was told by a person incarcerated at California City.
UCI: So, how was it, then, during COVID when everything was really shut down? I mean how did that affect programming and all of that?
Caller: Okay. When it was shut down you know, first, first they tell us, “You only can come out to 15 minutes to shower, two cells at a time.” And as time went on, then they – what they’re doing, four cells.
Then they ended up starting to open it up eight cells, you know, four at the bottom and four at the top. Now, right now we’re doing 11 cells. Eleven cells come out.
You know we come out, like, if you come out in the morning at 8:30, 8:30 to 10:30, that’s two hours. Then it go from 1:12 to 1:20, from 10:30 to 12:30. And then from 12:30 to 2:30, they start at 2:01 to 2:10. And at 2:30, they – we start at 2:11 through 2:20.
It’s trying, it’s trying to get a little better. Like I said, you know, I met guys just came in the building where they came from Ironwood. Some people came from Calipat, you know.
And they say that their prisons are opened up. Even they done got their percentages and everything. You know, we still here waiting on and trying to get the percentages – the new percentages that we’re supposed to get for our time off and stuff.
Since May, we haven’t got new dates. We haven’t got new dates or nothing here yet.
UCI: You mean new dates as in release dates, right?
Caller: Yes, ma’am, because it’s, you know, it’s a new percentage just came out May, because we – everybody that had 85 percent already went to 80, and they took five percent off for us. So, now the 80 percent, we’re supposed to be going down to 66 percent.
They’re supposed to be taking off, I think, 13 or 14 percent off of whatever time we have left. But nobody never got any time yet. And some guys that have been up here about – no, I’m gonna say only two guys so far, they got all their milestones and everything.
One guy was talking the other day, working PIA. He got milestones. He was about ready to go home. He said man, he said they laid around and gave him 60 more days.
I said, “How is that?” He said, “Because they overdid them.” They gave him too much of milestones credit when you’re only allowed to get up to two years.
UCI: And were these the individuals that were supposed to be released when COVID first hit and there was that big push to reduce population?
Caller: No, ma’am. No, ma’am. Ain’t nobody – nobody who was here was released during the COVID. No.
That’s why they put these P codes on you when you don’t have them, to keep you here. They get money off you in California for – in this private facility right here. No, ma’am, ain’t nobody left during, during the pandemic, kicking them out to go home during the COVID. No, ma’am, not here.