This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Centinela.
That eliminated our access to the day room area where we’re able to normally socialize with the other inmates, play games like chess, dominos, card games, etc. Use the showers and phones. We are on scheduled showers and phones now.
Our phones are also in the day room area and because the distance between each phone was less than six feet, the faculty decided to shut down every other phone to create a six foot distance. That affected us big time because now we don’t get calls every day.
They did eventually have engineers re-mount the phones at six feet distance. But then the facility imposed another new rule saying between each call the phone must be sanitized and sit for 10 minutes before the next use. Those ten minute gaps add up a lot of time in the day so unfortunately we still can’t call our families as often as we used to.
The biggest impact for me personally has been the rehabilitation and self-help programs. I also am a student taking face to face college courses. I have about 12 units left before achieving my degree in psychology. However, this pandemic has turned a lot of programs into correspondence packet courses.
I just don’t get the same out of it. I learn a lot more from face to face classes with a personal professor teaching me in person.
Even self help groups are better in person, when you can exchange stories, and hear other inmates talk about their experiences. There are not many programs running due to the pandemic. A lot of inmates are out of job assignments.
Stuck in their cell most of the day. Today for instance, I’ll be in my cell all day until 6:45 tonight, I’ll have one hour half access to the day room area if I’d like to attend. Keep in mind this access to the program just opened up about two weeks ago, since the pandemic started.
