This story was told by a person incarcerated at Soledad.
UCI: What is like what’s the current COVID situation there right now?
Caller: We had some cases, we were the last ones to get COVID here. This place for a long time didn’t get it. They did a raid on 300 inmates who are outside agency.
When they did that raid, those officers infected guys, because nobody around here had it, you know, only police can bring it in or staff. So no one had it, and then after that, we started getting cases. Currently, they have about 40 active cases.
But 170 people have been affected, you know, but now, they only have about 40 guys that have it. And so what they- the way they have it is there’s 10 housing units here. They have them segregated, so we actually go to the recreational yard by ourselves, we don’t go with any other wing.
UCI: Mhmm.
Caller: Only if you’re on the job site do you socialize, but they gave us- we got N95 masks, everybody got those now. So the guy from Twitter paid for that- Jack Dorsey.
UCI: Oh, yeah.
Caller: So-
UCI: So that’s going OK, is there anything that concerns you?
Caller: The number one thing that they can do- the level that we need them to do, is they need to get the occupancy down to 95 percent. If they don’t get the occupancy down to 95 percent, there’s no way to have space.
You know, it’s just- because one housing unit, say it’s 175 cells, that’s designed for one person to be in the cell, they got two people in every cell. So you have a housing unit with 350 people in it. It’s only twelve showers.
UCI: Yeah.
Caller: So- it’s, that’s why I use the bathroom there, because that’s what the cell is actually like. In a college dorm room, at most colleges are bigger than that, and you don’t use the bathroom in there. You know, you walk down the hall to the bathroom, unless it’s one of the new age dorms, or you know, it’s a real confined space.
San Quentin and Folsom have the smallest cells, but these are pretty small. You know, the newer prisons that were built in the 90s, with the prison boom, they have larger cells. So, but just imagine you’re in the bathroom for 24 hours a day.
UCI: Yeah.
Caller: They bring your food to you too.
