A Year Into COVID, Families of the Incarcerated Criticize Visitation Policy

Freepix/ VectorJuice

This story is part one in a three-part series, detailing the allegations and complaints families of the incarcerated have against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.

By Anissa Durham

One year ago, due to the coronavirus, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation canceled all in-person visits on March 11, 2020. 

The Department of Corrections is home to thousands of incarcerated people throughout its 35 prisons. COVID-19 has pressured the prison system to enforce stricter precautions to protect the health and safety of inmates and prison staff. 

But, this has left thousands of incarcerated people scrambling to connect with their loved ones. With major COVID outbreaks throughout the CA prison system, the Department of Corrections just announced on March 23, they would begin a phased reopening of in-person visiting beginning April 10, 2021. But this decision is left to the discretion of the warden at each prison.

Karla Sanchez shared her frustrations trying to navigate the limited access she has with her husband who is incarcerated at Salinas Valley State Prison. She said she has experienced a major loss in communication since the onset of the canceled visits. 

Sanchez is not alone in these struggles, she is part of multiple Facebook groups focused on supporting wives and families of incarcerated individuals, where many detail their irritation with the restrictions in place. 

Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terri Hardy said “CDCR understands the desire for friends and family members of incarcerated people to connect with their loved ones and to stay informed of their health care status, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic. CDCR made the difficult but necessary decision to suspend in-person visiting last spring.”

Karla Sanchez 

“I found myself yelling at a laptop,” Sanchez said when describing the first video-conference visit she had with her husband Brian Pacheco.

A Chula Vista native, she has spent the last few years making her marriage work with her husband behind bars. That all changed when the pandemic hit. 

She said she has experienced a major reduction in phone calls, spontaneous lockdowns, phones constantly getting cut and the never-ending mail service dilemma. This has made it difficult for them to communicate with each other, she said it is like living in two different worlds.

“We need to be able to see each other and hug each other. That’s our only way of getting true affection, you can express it in letters, but to actually feel it you would have to see the person physically,” she said. “I’ve cried about it. It’s been really hard without the visits.”

Sanchez said the few video-conference calls she had with her husband were plagued with faulty internet, blurred video and do not run on time.

“It really wasn’t fun. At first, I thought, at least I get to see him but when I did, it totally sucked,” she said. “30 minutes is not enough time."

Prison staff not confirming appointments happens all too often, she says.

Hardy the agency spokeswoman said in an email, “CDCR has implemented real-time video visiting and enabled a scheduling system that allowed potential visitors to pick their time and date of visit and get an immediate confirmation.” She also said the staff was trained to fix technical issues and guide families that experienced connectivity issues.  

“I think a lot of people see it as they’re in trouble so they should be punished and that they shouldn’t be having visits anyways but at the end of the day, they are also human,” Sanchez said.

In the same way, she will never fully understand what her husband goes through inside, she wants others to not be so quick to judge.

“I think people need to be more compassionate... and try to understand,” she said.  

With their fourth anniversary quickly approaching, Sanchez wants to see her husband in person again. 

“I’m in love with him. We really miss each other.” 

Brian Pacheco

“They [CDCR] were posting stuff saying that they were offering us all kinds of help to prevent us from getting [COVID] but quite a few inmates caught it right here,” Pacheco said in an interview.

Hardy wrote in an email that, “all inmates have been provided numerous cloth facial barriers, hand sanitizer and cleaning supplies, with additional supplies provided upon request. Incarcerated persons housed in the isolation and quarantined units are issued N95 masks.”

Life inside is different from what the Department of Corrections likes to portray to others, Pacheco said. The last time Pacheco and Sanchez saw each other in person was Feb. 16, 2020. 

“Supposedly you were getting treatment but when the inmates were coming back… they would say that they would just sit in their cell and pretty much go through all the motions and not get any treatment,” Pacheco said. “A good six months we were stuck in the cell.”

Hardy disputed this allegation, “claims that inmates were locked in their cells for six months are false.”

Pacheco says his new normal routine consists of spending nearly 48 hours in his cell before going outside for yard two hours out of the day. He said he is allowed out of his cell for an hour a day, every three to four days. He tries to sign-up for phone calls as quickly as he can but once it is full, he said he has to wait a few more days to try again.

Sanchez and Pacheco have only seen each other virtually twice since the Department of Corrections approved video-conference visits. He said they have been eligible for family visits but are not able to receive those either.

“There's no privacy… [guards] are standing right there and they have the speakers turned up loud and we don’t even get headphones,” he said about the video-conference visits.

Hardy again disputed this claim via email, “incarcerated people were allowed to use headphones to better hear conversations.”

Salinas Valley State Prison has recently started rolling out the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine for the incarcerated population and staff. Pacheco said he received his first shot on February 6, after waiting for the elderly and health comprised men to get it first. 

Despite receiving the first dose of the vaccine, Pacheco tries to be as careful as he can to not catch the virus. So far he has been successful. 

“Karla is really on me about wearing my mask,” he said. “So I make sure I wear it all the time.”