This series is part of KPFA’s coverage of the COVID-19 outbreak in California state prisons. On this episode, we hear from the mother of someone incarcerated inside Central California Women’s Facility (CCWF). KPFA spoke with a woman who only wanted to be identified as “Lisa” about her daughter who recently tested positive for COVID-19 while incarcerated at CCWF. We’re not naming “Lisa” or her daughter’s identities to protect against potential retaliation. The following is from an edited and excerpted interview with “Lisa.”
My daughter did test positive recently. As a mother, I felt horrible. It’s my worst fear right now. If I could trade places with her, I would.
She emailed me. That’s how I found out. And I panicked. Because I already knew from some of the other women that have talked about the conditions on the quarantine area, they have already told me. And so I panicked.
My daughter had tested negative before. And all of a sudden she was positive. And the reason why not just my daughter, but the other women are testing positive and it keeps spreading and they keep making everybody COVID positive is because when they send them to quarantine, because they keep this procedure of moving them like in a circle, and exposing them to each other, they send the women to quarantine, and sometimes they’re only there for 10 days and then they’d bring them back.
So they’re bringing back the virus. And many of the guards are walking around without masks.
The women can’t do anything because they will retaliate against them.
I’m in touch with many other women in the facility. And they tell me what’s what’s going on. So they’re confirming what my daughter is also saying. And then they’re transferring their fear into my soul with the emails that they sent me because I can feel it just from reading them. And they’re scared. They’re very scared because they can’t walk away like we can.
The conditions are horrible. No human being should have to live that way.
“No human being should have to live that way.”
These women are not being told anything. They’re just being thrown in there into conditions that are filthy. There’s garbage all around them. That’s one of the prevalent things that I keep hearing, that there’s garbage in the rooms. There’s garbage all around them. They’re saying that there are rooms where there are no plugs, and there’s no electricity. There’s not providing enough disinfectant. And they’re not cleaning the rooms themselves. They’re just not caring. And this is not okay.
These are human beings.
And the women are in fear, in absolute fear. So it’s not bad enough that the virus is something that they have to worry about, but everything around them seems like it’s closing in. And that just hurts the psyche of a person because they feel like they’re prisoners of war.
And I hope that somebody listening to this interview has the power to affect the outcome of this because my daughter is a great human being. She is loving, and she is a good person. And most of the women in there are somebody’s mother, somebody’s daughter, and somebody’s sister.
It is very, very, very difficult for a mother like myself to know that her daughter is in there. And there’s nothing she can do.
So this is from my daughter:
Mommy, please call here, and call the media. Last night, three COs [correctional officers] working here tested positive for COVID. One of the COs walked into a room with no mask. And when asked why he wasn’t wearing one, he replied, I think such-and-such gave me the COVID. I’m just waiting on my results. So if I already got it, so what?
Then another officer was threatening to move us to the C hall, which is the infected hallway. Mommy, this would endanger us and further expose us well as others to this relentless virus. We are in fear and should not have to move. Moving us into an infected hallway will solve nothing, only make matters worse with the spread.
My daughter is scared. She’s scared to death, literally to death. My daughter and I are close. I know how she feels. I know how scared she is that she’s never going to see me again.
The group California Coalition for Women Prisoners is calling for better conditions inside CCWF. You can find out more here.
Reported and produced by Lucy Kang