The Inside Scoop

Life in prison is never a walk in the park, but in the USA no one is to blame but ourselves. This is certainly not the case in third-world countries as well as a few others. If I had to speculate, I’d say that the quality of living in a country is directly related to the quality of living in its prisons. Most of them do not provide opportunities to better oneself. The gangs are given freedom to control what goes on inside and inmates are mistreated by staff. They are notoriously unsanitary, the food is sparse, and the justice system that populates those prisons are usually as corrupt as can be. All in all, I’m very happy I’m not doing time in a different country, even though it can be hard to have our human rights recognized, at least we have a fighting chance here. I would like to say thank you to all of the inmates and advocates who fought to have our rights recognized in the previous years. We are already separated from society—I don’t believe that there is any reason why someone ...

This week I’m sharing an “assignment” we were given not long ago regarding our feelings/opinion etc. about covid: When I first heard of covid I was in Calipatria State Prison, which is a level 4, so there isn’t a lot of freedom. I was lucky enough to drop points (your points determine what level you go to by how good or bad you are) and be one of the last buses to transport prisoners before covid restrictions came into effect. I found my self on a pretty decent level 3 that was fairly close to where I used to live (and where my family still lives). I was also very lucky that the prison yard I was on barely had a handful of cases throughout the pandemic, so not only did I not get covid, but we never went into full quarantine lockdown like a lot of other prisons did. I was recently able to get vaccinated, so I’m glad for that. It makes me feel much safer. One thing I will always remember is watching covid seep into television—at first it was all over the news, then slowly but surely ...

  Since I’ve been down, I’ve been to a few prisons. I did time at Tracy Reception Center (DVI) and that place is really run down. It’s a good thing they’re shutting it down. I’ve done a layover in Wasco, and that place was very dirty, plus the food was terrible.  So far, most of my time was done in Calipatria (CAL). It wasn’t dirty and the food was halfway decent, but there were no options for jobs or self-help programs, and there wasn’t a lot of dayroom or yard… but it’s a level 4.  The place I’m in now is Sierra Conservation Center (SCC) in Jamestown, CA. When I showed up it was Disneyland. All day programs, lots of job options and self-help programs. But, ever since covid hit, all that pretty much cut in half, which is better than most other places.  I have heard that Mule Creek, Stockton, and Donovan are pretty nice, but everyone has their own opinion of nice. It’s all still prison. If anyone feels like they would like to write to me personally, that’s fine wit...