This letter was written by a person incarcerated at Valley State.
Hello. I am 43 years old, and I have been incarcerated since I was 19 years old. I am writing this story to share my experience of testing positive for COVID-19 in prison. In this story, I will share how CDCR mishandled the whole COVID-19, and how they infected the whole prison population by their negligence.
March 2020, they locked down all prisons in the state of California. I was at Valley State Prison in Chowchilla, California. It’s a level two prison and we live in eight man dorms. The prison went on modified program.
No self help groups, no visits, no education, no college, and no vacation. Two hours of dayroom and two hours of yard. One building goes to the yard, only, for two hours, then the next building. Only one hallway at a time for dayroom.
The officers and free-staff are coming to work everyday, and going home.
I’m working in the kitchen so I was considered a critical worker, essential worker. They had me working seven days a week. I felt like a slave.
The prison handled out no extra cleaning supplies, no bleach, and had no compassion for us as human beings. In a way, they started forcing us to test for COVID-19. At first it was optional, then it went to “If you don’t test, then you will be moved to quarantine.”
