This story was told by a person incarcerated at Tehachapi.
UCI: How about other conditions that you can tell me about maybe PPE, like personal protective equipment? And, you explain to me social distancing is just basically staying in your cell, but what else can you think of?
Caller: Well, I mean, the only thing that they’ve given us here is, they’ve given us masks but we’ve had these masks now for, I want to say, about six months now probably. And it’s the same masks all we do is just wash them in the sink and wear ‘em again. So, yeah. I mean, all we do is we try to maintain our social distance. But, you know, it’s, I don’t know. I can’t explain it. We go to yard and people, they play basketball, they, you know, they still, not everybody follows that social distancing.
UCI: And, I’m sorry I forgot to ask your facility name. Can you tell me what facility are you calling from?
Caller: I’m calling from California Correctional Institution.
UCI: Thank you.
Caller: Yeah.
UCI: Thank you.
Caller: Tehachapi.
UCI: Thank you. And, so, what do you think, what do you think would make it better? What do you think should change for conditions to get better with COVID? Can you think of anything?
Caller: How I’m gonna get better?
UCI: What do you think they can do better in the prison?
Caller: Well, I mean, maybe the vaccine. Hopefully the vaccines help, you know. I don’t know when they’re gonna start doing them but hopefully these vaccines. They’ve been talking about it and they’re saying it’s gonna, that they should have some vaccines soon. But I don’t know exactly when.
