This story was told by a person incarcerated at Corcoran.
UCI: Oh, wow. So would you say that the facility didn’t handle the outbreak, in the beginning, very well?
Caller: No, no, no. Not at all. You know, we’re like the worst of the worst in their mind. So, for them, it doesn’t – they don’t really care if we get it. You know? I believe a lot of them hope we did die off. But we didn’t have a lot of deaths here. From my understanding, we only had two. And one of them was older and had a weak immune system.
And another guy had asthma or some type of an infection that it was hard for him to fight off. And they caught it when it was first being talked about, before we even had masks or was even told to be six feet away or before we was even able to, you know, really clean like we’ve been cleaning since. So, you know, then, as of late, from what they’re saying, they’re trying to bring a lot of inmates from San Quentin prison down here.
And San Quentin had a real bad outbreak as well. And that was because they transferred a lot of inmates from another prison to their prison. So they’re trying to protest the move. But they were successful at bringing some people down and putting them on another yard – not my yard, but another yard. So it doesn’t seem like they really care too much.
UCI: Right. And do you think that, now that all this is being put out, do you think that it’s being handled differently now or do you think it’s the same situation that it was before?
Caller: It doesn’t seem like they’re – it seems like they’re handling it a little bit better. But not too much so, to where as you can’t still be affected by it. You know? I mean the way they program us now, it’s only – when you have yard, it’s only going to be one section of a building for an hour. And then, they’re going to keep rotating it. And then, the next tier will come out that afternoon, one section at a time.
So, when you’re on the yard, you’re not out there with a lot of people and they’re making sure you stay six feet apart. But, yet, they don’t have their masks up all the way. You know? COs aren’t six feet apart from each other. You know? So their way of doing it, it just makes it look like they’re doing something about it. But, in reality, they’re not really doing too much.
UCI: Right. And what do you think – what would make the situation at your facility better? Like what do you think would help?
Caller: Honestly, if they would start releasing people. I mean you got people in prison for non-violent offenders who have a lot of time. They’re not taking the time to go back in cases and try to, at least, resentence people or kick people out who were non-violent offenders earlier than they should.
They’re not doing enough to try to eliminate the prison population. You know? Because, of course, that takes away their job, if there’s not people to monitor in prison. You know? So, if they was to do that, that might could help. You know? Without that, it’s just us trying to take care of ourselves the best way we can. Like, myself, I don’t really come out of the cell too much.
I go to work just to make sure that – and just, you know, making sure I stay six feet away from people and cleaning the phone, cleaning the shower before I get in it. You know? Stuff like that. They gave us hand sanitizer, but they took the alcohol out of it. So we don’t really know how strong it is. And they only utilized the hand sanitizer for about a month. Now, they’re not bringing it back in here. The COs are the only ones that can have that. You know? So, to me, if they was to start releasing people who have release dates anyway, that might make a difference.
