This story was told by a person incarcerated at Los Angeles County Men’s Central Jail.
Caller: I haven’t talked to – I have an eight-year-old daughter out there. I haven’t talked to her in three years. And I’ve been – and since I’ve been in here, I hadn’t, like I was saying, my uncle in [redacted] died from COVID.
So, it’s affected our family a lot. It’s affected me real bad because it’s put a lot of stress on me worrying about my 78-year-old father who has just – who just had like three major heart attacks in the last probably year now.
And since he’s had like a bad heart, he’s got emphysema, the vaccine really affected him real hard. He’s still having like health problems over it.
So you know like we were kind of thinking what’s going on with this vaccine? A lot of people were thinking that, like you know the long-term effects of it. They don’t trust it.
UCI: Right. And have you noticed reduced visitation and programming since the pandemic began?
Caller: Ma’am, I’ve been in isolation for three years here in this LA county jail. I only get an hour of TV time a week out in the TV room by myself. And I don’t get no other interaction at all with the other inmates.
I haven’t even seen a pastor or chaplain on this row in months. So, there’s like no religious support in here. There’s nothing new.
We don’t get to see our families. The mail only gets passed out to us once a week back here. So, yeah, you know, it’s real stressful on us inmates.
UCI: Yeah, considering how secluded you are how have you been coping with the crisis?
Caller: How am I coping with it? I don’t have no choice. I’m in isolation. I’m sitting here plugging out of my mind right now, you know?
Since, I can’t call my family. I don’t have no support whatsoever. The only one that I-
UCI: Are you there?
Caller: You know like a lot of the checks and stuff like that. And us inmates in here, you know, we should get them too.
UCI: I’m sorry. Can you repeat that last – can you repeat that last sentence that you said?
Caller: Sure. I said like a lot of people out there are getting the stimulus checks. You know, you know like to help them, but people in here, inmates, they don’t have family support and can’t get the stimulus checks. You know, I feel that we should be able to get one too because we’re – we’re in here going through it too.
UCI: Right.
Caller: You know like people in here like me, who don’t have family support, we can’t buy like, you know like, stationary, hygiene articles, and stuff like that.
