This story was told by a person incarcerated at Fresno County Jail.
UCI: How has the COVID situation been like at your facility?
Caller: Oh, no, it’s really bad at our facility. They got us at three people to a bunk. There’s no such thing as six feet distancing. And I got a couple other homeboys in here that would like to share their stories, too, about the pandemic.
Whoever – whoever comes in this pod, and if they got COVID, they have to be safely removed from the pod because we don’t want to go on quarantine. And quarantine – quarantine, if somebody tests positive, they cut off visits. They cut off – you can’t get no medical attention or none of that.
UCI: Wow, that sounds really really rough. How have you been coping with this?
Caller: Yeah, I’ve been trying to just let it – let it fly by, you know, because there’s not really nothing we can do about it because it’s, I mean, all the staff, it’s them against us, you know? We’re criminals. They’re not. We’re crooks. They’re not, you know?
UCI: Yeah, but do you think there’s anything they could do to make your situation better?
Caller: Yeah. I mean, yeah, there’s lots of things. I mean, they should test the people and see if they got COVID before they release them into a pod, you know, because that – when somebody comes in fresh off the street, and if they have COVID, they’re going to give it to all the other inmates, and then that’s bad. You know, that’s risking lives – risking for one person that just got booked in off the street.
