This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Chowchilla.
I hope this letter finds all of you in good health. I thank all of you for your courage and being on the frontlines.
As for being incarcerated, a mother, and facing the COVID pandemic, it has been lonely, scary, and isolating. Lonely due to having no family visits or even regular contact, I have to get to hug my loved ones, visit.
It’s lonely because our e-mails are held for days, and the video grams (30 second duration) are held up for months. So that hearing and seeing our loved ones is almost nonexistent.
Scary due to the fact that at the onset of COVID in March 2020, our staff did not wear masks, or if they did, wore them improperly. We did not get any masks until June or July while staff were coming to work and testing positive, we could do nothing to protect ourselves.
Scary because the staff brought the virus and now inmates are testing positive and we don’t get a ventilator. We don’t get proper medication. They don’t even provide inmates the proper masks.
We get fabric masks that are too tight, too loose, or perfect and each one is sprayed with a chemical fire retardant that we have to breathe into our lungs and brains.
If one building is quarantined, the staff working that quarantined building comes to another building to response to alarms or even to work overtime. They do not wash their clothes, body, or change gloves or masks. The COs are the enemy bringing COVID to all inmates. And we are powerless against this.
