This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Norco.
I’m currently housed at California Rehabilitation Center, Norco, Cal. Don’t let the name fool you, there is “nothing” rehabilitative about this place! So I got 12 years for walking away from Delancey Street programs. I was detained to Delancey Street instead of state prison. I left Delancey Street for family reasons and was given 12 years state prison.
I asked to come to California Rehabilitation Center, “CRC,” to get help with my drug problem. I arrived in 2019. I asked at my initial review to be placed into whatever programs available to work on my addiction and help me help myself so I can get my life back on track!
For several months I sat around with nothing to do because this prison was so full it was approaching at 160 percent. Way overcrowded. People have been on waiting lists for two and three years just to get into any programs, which also means our living conditions are inhuman! We live in dorms that are actually falling apart.
The floors have holes big enough to put a football in. Our were originally designed for 35 inmates, we have 80 inmates now. Our beds are bunk beds that are 20, 36 inches apart. Four toilets, two urinals and a wall with six shower heads on it for 75, 80 people to share!
Then COVID hit our dorm. We had 78 people in here, three feet wide with 40 bunk beds lined up one side, two, three feet apart, walkway is about three feet wide, with 40 more beds on other side, a door in the center for bathroom/showers. You can’t go any place outside this which means there is no possibility of social distancing!
And because people were catching COVID, you’d think the prison would have followed Governor Newsom’s order in March and stopped all transfers and movement and kept all of us confined to our dorms in case one of us catch it from staff, it would not be spread all through the prison. However, this prison ignored all Governor’s orders and did whatever they wanted.
