expresses opinions that are
not those of the IFC.
Logo Created By VSPW Graphic Arts Program
"Thank You Ladies"
STORY TO A NEW INMATE - "Going to VSPW"
This letter was written to a grandfather when his granddaughter had been sentenced to time at VSPW. She was still in Shasta County lockup, and just about to be sent to Chowchilla.
a letter to an inmate from.....
a letter to an inmate from.....
February 20, 2007
K.C #XXXXXX
Tehama County Jail
PO Box 490
Red Bluff, CA 96080-0490
Dear K:
Greetings! Your grandfather was out surfing the internet yesterday, and he located a website that I work on. It’s www.vspw-ifc.com , and it’s put together by a couple of volunteers who have family members locked up down in Chowchilla at Valley State Prison for Women. It’s right across the street from CCWF, and is basically a mirror image of CCWF….only about 5 years newer. Anyhow, the volunteer group called the “Inmate Family Council” sponsors a website, and also meets regularly with the Warden and prison staff. The IFC came about because back in 2002 the state legislature decided that all the state prisons should encourage family members to meet with the staff on a regular basis. That way, they could bring their concerns and problems with the prison directly to the administration's attention.
In practice, some administrators have participated, and some have resisted this. It seems to be improving over time, and it is really nice to have a way to voice family concerns, and have a way to ask the administration of the different prisons to deal with family members. It's not a perfect solution, but it is a step in the right direction, and the IFC members appreciate being able to have access to prison officials this way.
Over the last few years, several Inmate Family Councils started up at most of the prisons around California, but several of the men’s prisons had trouble keeping them going. Men get transferred a lot more, and the situations were generally more antagonistic. IFC members and their inmates experienced retaliation, and all kinds of problems. Anyhow, several of the men’s prisons no longer have IFCs, but the women’s prisons have a much more stable population, and the IFCs at VSPW and CCWF have stayed very active. In fact, the most recent Chair for CCWF’s IFC, Bonnie Long, has gotten involved at the state level, and is on the Statewide IFC in Sacramento, and is also active on the Gender Responsive Committee with members of the executive staff for the women’s prisons at CDCR, and is a serious activitist. She’s at CIW now, and we miss her in the valley, but she’s doing great things, and she keeps us posted on lots of issues that have to do with women’s prisons and women’s rights.
So, I’m writing to you because your grandfather is concerned about your transition into the state system. He was out on the internet and found the VSPW website, as I mentioned before, and he read several stories we have on the site from people who went in for the first time. Chances are that you will be at VSPW for a little bit, or perhaps CCWF (I’m not sure of the Receiving Yard setup at CCWF, but I’m sure it’s similar). I've ben told that the first couple of weeks are the hardest, and people end up being completely isolated from the outside during that period, in one of the most frightening situations they’ve ever been in….and completely trapped, besides. It does get better, especially after you ‘get over the wall’. That means getting off of A Yard, and assigned to one of the other Yards, and in a program. There are 4 yards; A Yard is Receiving, certain medical (such as pregnant people), the Special Housing Unit and Administrative Segregation. It’s locked up separately from the rest of the prison. Yards B, C and D are general population. B Yard has the handicapped people, and has the wheelchair rooms, etc. A lot of the people with serious medical concerns are on B Yard. D Yard is where most of the Substance Abuse Program people are located, since it’s where the “SAP” trailer is located. B, C and D Yards have access to the main yard for exercise and the library and stuff like that.
Receiving is a large open building, two stories, with the room doors opening out into the center. The rooms are 2-person rooms, and pretty small. The guards yell A LOT in Receiving. They’re probably the toughest of all the guards on the prison grounds, no doubt because they're dealing with a much tougher population. One that's constantly in a state of change, and has a lot of people adjusting to new circumstances -- and not very happy ones, at that. They are pretty strict, and things can get pretty scary and loud. Again, it DOES get better, but the first week….the first few weeks….are pretty bad. And very, very loud. And it’s hard to get a handle on all the little things, because they aren’t in the rule book…. you just have to observe and pick them up on your own, or get lucky enough to have them discussed by someone who has already experienced this mess before. By the way, one of the things my sister mentioned to me was that they have little ‘flags’ that you’re supposed to stick through the door and wave to get the central guard to unlock your door so you can get out into the main section, to go to meals and stuff. When she got there, she was put in a room by herself, and it happened to be on the lower tier, and kind of behind a stairwell. You have little windows in the top of the door to see through, so you can look out and see what’s going on when you wave your flag. Unfortunately, my sister is short (4’9”), and she couldn’t see up on top of the metal locker that was in the room. It had a flag sitting up on top of it. She also couldn’t see the other doors across the central area, because the stairwell was blocking the view. So she couldn’t see the other rooms waving their flags to get out. So….not knowing that she had to wave a flag to get out, not even knowing that there was a flag in the room (to try and figure out what to do with it), and not having anyone else in the room to tell her what was going on, she ended up sitting in her room for almost two whole days before someone realized that she hadn’t come out for anything yet. The guards wouldn’t tell her how to get out when they came around for count, so she was in a bad position. I suspect it doesn’t get much worse than that….basically, she was locked in solitary confinement without meals and without any information at all for the first two days she was there. Do you think she was a little bit freaked? Yeah, probably! She said that she tried pounding on her door several times, begging to have someone check on her, and nothing happened. Finally, someone in an adjacent room brought her pounding to the attention of a guard, and they finally let her out. Then someone explained to her about the flag. So now you know about the flag, okay?
Plus, you don’t get to take anything with you, and it can take 30 to 60 days before your trust fund monies follow you, and you get one “fish kit” when you get there, with a stubby golf pencil and a short toothbrush, and a plastic comb. And they’ll issue you state clothing, and it probably won’t fit right or be comfortable. After you’ve been there a while, you can get a ‘quarterly package’, but first you need to be ‘classified’ and ‘endorsed’, which pretty much happens at the time you’re ready to go ‘over the wall’. There are some people that can get quarterly packages on A Yard, but they’re people who are assigned there for a period of time, like the pregnant ladies, or the people in SHU and Ad Seg.
Everyone who gets a quarterly package fits into a specific category. You’ll probably be allowed to get a regular quarterly package, which means you can get up to 30 pounds of stuff. Quarterly packages may be purchased from specific vendors, who have been approved by the State. They have lists of allowable items that you can have. Most of the ladies send out a checklist of items to their families, and the family purchases the stuff and have it sent in by the vendor. This means that they pay for it, and you don’t have to have the money taken out of your trust fund there at the prison. That way, you don’t have to pay for the box with money that has had restitution taken out of it…..and a 10% surcharge for having the trust accounting department send the money to the vendor. Since restitution is something like 55% now, it’s well worth it to have your family send in the package, of course. You’ll probably want to get things like personal bras and shampoo and food. Most people end up getting one quarterly package every three months, and the package must be received by the last day of the quarter, or it won’t count for LAST quarter, it will take up the NEXT quarter.
The Quarters are:
January through March
April through June
July through September, and
October through December
Beware! The prison is a state institution, so they don’t receive mail on State holidays. Like Ceasar Chavez Day. Which is the last day of March (march 31st). Now, the Post Office delivers mail that day….it’s not a Federal holiday….but since the prison mailroom is closed that day (it’s a California holiday), they don’t accept quarterly packages. So people who fail to get their quarterly package for the first quarter ordered and delivered before the last day of March will miss the first quarter, and all of a sudden their box will show up during the second quarter….they only get one box for a 6-month period. This may be a bummer, but that’s how it works.
In your case, it’ll probably be post-first-quarter before you’re over the wall.
The prisons also allow you to get a “Special Purchase” once per quarter, too. I don’t have the rules at my fingertips – you’ll get the info when you get down there. I forget if you can get your entertainment stuff via QPs or SPs, but you can get little TVs and stuff like that at some point. You’ll want to wait until you’re situated before deciding on this stuff. It’s limited each quarter, you’ll have to make limited choices. Plus, if you move to a different prison, you have to send almost all your personal gear home, and then it will have to be re-ordered brand new again. That's because you can ONLY receive personal items through the approved vendors. So if you send a TV home because you get moved to Ad Seg or across the street, then it can't be sent back in. You'll have to get a brand new one. Keep this in mind if you think you might get moved to a different prison.
Finally, postage stamps are considered valuable in A Yard and elsewhere. When your family is able to begin sending in mail, they can write you letters that include postage stamps. Up to 40 postage stamps per letter. They can’t send you any envelopes, blank paper or pencils – you’ll need to get that sort of thing from the commissary or from a quarterly package. AND…. postage stamps are something everyone needs.
Technically, you’re only supposed to have 40 postage stamps in your personal property, but this is something that varies, especially since you could have a bunch of different denominations of stamps. 2 Cent stamps are becoming more important these days, as the postage rates are going up every 12 months or so, and a lot of times the commissary doesn't stock them (too much of a hassle, I think). So the prison is generous about the amount of stamps you have in your personal possession. Since every letter you get can include up to 40 postage stamps, you can see that you could probably have plenty of stamps on a regular basis. There is a limit on photographs that can be sent in at one time, by the way. No polaroids, and a maximum of 10 per letter. However, if the photos are printed out on regular writing paper, like in the body of a letter, there is no limit, as far as I know. I send in mail with pictures all the time (printed on regular paper) and haven’t had any trouble with that.
Now, as far as the mail – they’re always BEHIND on the mail. Sometimes it gets pretty bad, like around Christmas and after any state holiday, and during high-vacation periods, like around the 4th of July and Labor Day. This year at Christmas, they got to almost 45 days behind. In other words, the stuff I sent in during mid-November wasn’t received on the yards until the first two weeks of January. I’ve toured the mailroom before, and I’ve got a pretty good relationship with the mailroom Sargent, Sgt. Kinchloe, and he admits it’s ridiculous. He really works hard to keep up, and he's always trying to get more help. Unfortunately, the mail volume just keeps going up, but they don’t have the money to hire more people in the mailroom. The last IFC meeting minutes indicate that they were still 20 or more days behind at the end of January. It’s probably going to stay that way this year, from the look of things. The only thing that gets in relatively fast are POST CARDS. I keep a pile of them around here, for when I need to get information to someone fast. Fast meaning approximately two weeks from the time I mail it. Sometimes postcards will actually get in within a week. Postcards don’t need to be opened and checked for postage stamps and contraband, so they get sorted into the yard bags a lot faster. I’ve already told your grandfather about this. All they need are your CDCR number and your room assignment. I’ve also given your grandfather the rundown on how to get those two pieces of information as fast as possible. If the CDCR number and room assignment aren’t on the mail, it can take extra double time to get any piece of mail to you – and, in fact, they could let it sit for a few months and then send it back to the sender. So it’s really, REALLY important for anyone who writes to you to put your name, CDCR number, and room assignment on the mail. Even if you get moved to another room while the mail is working it’s way to you, it’s easier for it to follow you…. even though re-routing can also take a while. It’s still faster than no room assignment number. Basically, when the room assignment isn’t on the envelope, it goes into the FORGET IT FOR NOW file…..
Let’s see, what else? Well, there is a ton of stuff, and the ‘orientation’ doesn’t really help much. They hand you a package of information, and don’t really explain much. The things you really need to know certainly aren’t in the materials….they’re the little bits of common wisdom that you’ll just have to pick up. For instance, you can have the medical people give you a form that you sign, allowing your family to discuss your medical information with them. You need to ask for it; I don’t think they automatically offer it to you. I’ll send you a sample copy along with this note, so you know what to ask for. If you don’t get this done during intake, you can get ‘ducated’ to do it at Medical some other time. They use a ‘ducat’ system to allow you to do things….everything from seeing a counselor to going to the commissary to doing your laundry, etc., etc. By the way, the counselors are swamped all the time. They are there to help with basic paperwork that has to do with you assignments, etc. You’ll need to go through them if you need to get a paper notarized, or when you’re arranging for parole. They are essentially administrative secretaries, and I understand that each one is currently handling way more inmates than they can actually handle. So be polite, but be persistant.
Finally, phone calls. When you get to VSPW, you MAY NOT use the phone. You have to earn the right to use the phone on Receiving. You basically have to find a volunteer job to do, and after 20 hours, they’ll allow you to use the phone one time. It won’t count toward release or anything like that, but you’ll be able to get a chance to use the phone after a couple of weeks. There aren't enough jobs to go around, and this may not be something that everyone is interested in doing.
Once you’re assigned to a yard and program, you should be able to sign up for phone calls. You may actually be able to use the phone before you leave A Yard (once they move you off the main receiving building into one of the other A Yard buildings). There's a process of signing up ahead of time. I think they have 15 minute slots. However, it may be difficult to actually make your time slot, due to lockdowns, schedule problems, etc. Additionally, there are always people waiting to use the phone, and it’s pretty noisy and crazy (well, you’ve probably experienced the phone scene at the county level….), but you can call collect out to your family at that point. Expect that to take a couple of months. Also, your family will have to deal with the telephone company that owns the current phone contract with California prisons. Your family will probably have to sign up with the current phone company (it was MCI, but now it's Global TelCom) and have a sinking fund in order to receive phone calls from you, but that won’t happen right at first. Phone calls are also very expensive. You should try to keep in touch with your family via mail. They'll appreciate it, and hopefully they'll also write to you on a regular basis.
Well, this turned out to be a heck-of-a-lot longer than I expected when I first sat down to write. I’m including a couple of printouts from our website, information on quarterly packages and mail, and a copy of our February IFC minutes. I hope this catches you before you get sent off.
If you have any questions, or would like to keep in touch, feel free. I’d be glad to send you regular IFC minutes once you’re at the state level, if you’re at VSPW, or hook you up with the CCWF IFC.
Enuf! Please tell your grandfather that I sent something in to you, okay? Thanks!
Sincerely,
N Rubinstein
VSPW IFC volunteer
I hope that this letter to a new inmate will help answer some basic questions about "what it's like" inside. For a new prisoner, any information is a God-send.
You can see a copy of the Orientation Handbook in another section of this website. You should look at it to see what your loved one is being told. It will help you understand what she is dealing with.
K.C #XXXXXX
Tehama County Jail
PO Box 490
Red Bluff, CA 96080-0490
Dear K:
Greetings! Your grandfather was out surfing the internet yesterday, and he located a website that I work on. It’s www.vspw-ifc.com , and it’s put together by a couple of volunteers who have family members locked up down in Chowchilla at Valley State Prison for Women. It’s right across the street from CCWF, and is basically a mirror image of CCWF….only about 5 years newer. Anyhow, the volunteer group called the “Inmate Family Council” sponsors a website, and also meets regularly with the Warden and prison staff. The IFC came about because back in 2002 the state legislature decided that all the state prisons should encourage family members to meet with the staff on a regular basis. That way, they could bring their concerns and problems with the prison directly to the administration's attention.
In practice, some administrators have participated, and some have resisted this. It seems to be improving over time, and it is really nice to have a way to voice family concerns, and have a way to ask the administration of the different prisons to deal with family members. It's not a perfect solution, but it is a step in the right direction, and the IFC members appreciate being able to have access to prison officials this way.
Over the last few years, several Inmate Family Councils started up at most of the prisons around California, but several of the men’s prisons had trouble keeping them going. Men get transferred a lot more, and the situations were generally more antagonistic. IFC members and their inmates experienced retaliation, and all kinds of problems. Anyhow, several of the men’s prisons no longer have IFCs, but the women’s prisons have a much more stable population, and the IFCs at VSPW and CCWF have stayed very active. In fact, the most recent Chair for CCWF’s IFC, Bonnie Long, has gotten involved at the state level, and is on the Statewide IFC in Sacramento, and is also active on the Gender Responsive Committee with members of the executive staff for the women’s prisons at CDCR, and is a serious activitist. She’s at CIW now, and we miss her in the valley, but she’s doing great things, and she keeps us posted on lots of issues that have to do with women’s prisons and women’s rights.
So, I’m writing to you because your grandfather is concerned about your transition into the state system. He was out on the internet and found the VSPW website, as I mentioned before, and he read several stories we have on the site from people who went in for the first time. Chances are that you will be at VSPW for a little bit, or perhaps CCWF (I’m not sure of the Receiving Yard setup at CCWF, but I’m sure it’s similar). I've ben told that the first couple of weeks are the hardest, and people end up being completely isolated from the outside during that period, in one of the most frightening situations they’ve ever been in….and completely trapped, besides. It does get better, especially after you ‘get over the wall’. That means getting off of A Yard, and assigned to one of the other Yards, and in a program. There are 4 yards; A Yard is Receiving, certain medical (such as pregnant people), the Special Housing Unit and Administrative Segregation. It’s locked up separately from the rest of the prison. Yards B, C and D are general population. B Yard has the handicapped people, and has the wheelchair rooms, etc. A lot of the people with serious medical concerns are on B Yard. D Yard is where most of the Substance Abuse Program people are located, since it’s where the “SAP” trailer is located. B, C and D Yards have access to the main yard for exercise and the library and stuff like that.
Receiving is a large open building, two stories, with the room doors opening out into the center. The rooms are 2-person rooms, and pretty small. The guards yell A LOT in Receiving. They’re probably the toughest of all the guards on the prison grounds, no doubt because they're dealing with a much tougher population. One that's constantly in a state of change, and has a lot of people adjusting to new circumstances -- and not very happy ones, at that. They are pretty strict, and things can get pretty scary and loud. Again, it DOES get better, but the first week….the first few weeks….are pretty bad. And very, very loud. And it’s hard to get a handle on all the little things, because they aren’t in the rule book…. you just have to observe and pick them up on your own, or get lucky enough to have them discussed by someone who has already experienced this mess before. By the way, one of the things my sister mentioned to me was that they have little ‘flags’ that you’re supposed to stick through the door and wave to get the central guard to unlock your door so you can get out into the main section, to go to meals and stuff. When she got there, she was put in a room by herself, and it happened to be on the lower tier, and kind of behind a stairwell. You have little windows in the top of the door to see through, so you can look out and see what’s going on when you wave your flag. Unfortunately, my sister is short (4’9”), and she couldn’t see up on top of the metal locker that was in the room. It had a flag sitting up on top of it. She also couldn’t see the other doors across the central area, because the stairwell was blocking the view. So she couldn’t see the other rooms waving their flags to get out. So….not knowing that she had to wave a flag to get out, not even knowing that there was a flag in the room (to try and figure out what to do with it), and not having anyone else in the room to tell her what was going on, she ended up sitting in her room for almost two whole days before someone realized that she hadn’t come out for anything yet. The guards wouldn’t tell her how to get out when they came around for count, so she was in a bad position. I suspect it doesn’t get much worse than that….basically, she was locked in solitary confinement without meals and without any information at all for the first two days she was there. Do you think she was a little bit freaked? Yeah, probably! She said that she tried pounding on her door several times, begging to have someone check on her, and nothing happened. Finally, someone in an adjacent room brought her pounding to the attention of a guard, and they finally let her out. Then someone explained to her about the flag. So now you know about the flag, okay?
Plus, you don’t get to take anything with you, and it can take 30 to 60 days before your trust fund monies follow you, and you get one “fish kit” when you get there, with a stubby golf pencil and a short toothbrush, and a plastic comb. And they’ll issue you state clothing, and it probably won’t fit right or be comfortable. After you’ve been there a while, you can get a ‘quarterly package’, but first you need to be ‘classified’ and ‘endorsed’, which pretty much happens at the time you’re ready to go ‘over the wall’. There are some people that can get quarterly packages on A Yard, but they’re people who are assigned there for a period of time, like the pregnant ladies, or the people in SHU and Ad Seg.
Everyone who gets a quarterly package fits into a specific category. You’ll probably be allowed to get a regular quarterly package, which means you can get up to 30 pounds of stuff. Quarterly packages may be purchased from specific vendors, who have been approved by the State. They have lists of allowable items that you can have. Most of the ladies send out a checklist of items to their families, and the family purchases the stuff and have it sent in by the vendor. This means that they pay for it, and you don’t have to have the money taken out of your trust fund there at the prison. That way, you don’t have to pay for the box with money that has had restitution taken out of it…..and a 10% surcharge for having the trust accounting department send the money to the vendor. Since restitution is something like 55% now, it’s well worth it to have your family send in the package, of course. You’ll probably want to get things like personal bras and shampoo and food. Most people end up getting one quarterly package every three months, and the package must be received by the last day of the quarter, or it won’t count for LAST quarter, it will take up the NEXT quarter.
The Quarters are:
January through March
April through June
July through September, and
October through December
Beware! The prison is a state institution, so they don’t receive mail on State holidays. Like Ceasar Chavez Day. Which is the last day of March (march 31st). Now, the Post Office delivers mail that day….it’s not a Federal holiday….but since the prison mailroom is closed that day (it’s a California holiday), they don’t accept quarterly packages. So people who fail to get their quarterly package for the first quarter ordered and delivered before the last day of March will miss the first quarter, and all of a sudden their box will show up during the second quarter….they only get one box for a 6-month period. This may be a bummer, but that’s how it works.
In your case, it’ll probably be post-first-quarter before you’re over the wall.
The prisons also allow you to get a “Special Purchase” once per quarter, too. I don’t have the rules at my fingertips – you’ll get the info when you get down there. I forget if you can get your entertainment stuff via QPs or SPs, but you can get little TVs and stuff like that at some point. You’ll want to wait until you’re situated before deciding on this stuff. It’s limited each quarter, you’ll have to make limited choices. Plus, if you move to a different prison, you have to send almost all your personal gear home, and then it will have to be re-ordered brand new again. That's because you can ONLY receive personal items through the approved vendors. So if you send a TV home because you get moved to Ad Seg or across the street, then it can't be sent back in. You'll have to get a brand new one. Keep this in mind if you think you might get moved to a different prison.
Finally, postage stamps are considered valuable in A Yard and elsewhere. When your family is able to begin sending in mail, they can write you letters that include postage stamps. Up to 40 postage stamps per letter. They can’t send you any envelopes, blank paper or pencils – you’ll need to get that sort of thing from the commissary or from a quarterly package. AND…. postage stamps are something everyone needs.
Technically, you’re only supposed to have 40 postage stamps in your personal property, but this is something that varies, especially since you could have a bunch of different denominations of stamps. 2 Cent stamps are becoming more important these days, as the postage rates are going up every 12 months or so, and a lot of times the commissary doesn't stock them (too much of a hassle, I think). So the prison is generous about the amount of stamps you have in your personal possession. Since every letter you get can include up to 40 postage stamps, you can see that you could probably have plenty of stamps on a regular basis. There is a limit on photographs that can be sent in at one time, by the way. No polaroids, and a maximum of 10 per letter. However, if the photos are printed out on regular writing paper, like in the body of a letter, there is no limit, as far as I know. I send in mail with pictures all the time (printed on regular paper) and haven’t had any trouble with that.
Now, as far as the mail – they’re always BEHIND on the mail. Sometimes it gets pretty bad, like around Christmas and after any state holiday, and during high-vacation periods, like around the 4th of July and Labor Day. This year at Christmas, they got to almost 45 days behind. In other words, the stuff I sent in during mid-November wasn’t received on the yards until the first two weeks of January. I’ve toured the mailroom before, and I’ve got a pretty good relationship with the mailroom Sargent, Sgt. Kinchloe, and he admits it’s ridiculous. He really works hard to keep up, and he's always trying to get more help. Unfortunately, the mail volume just keeps going up, but they don’t have the money to hire more people in the mailroom. The last IFC meeting minutes indicate that they were still 20 or more days behind at the end of January. It’s probably going to stay that way this year, from the look of things. The only thing that gets in relatively fast are POST CARDS. I keep a pile of them around here, for when I need to get information to someone fast. Fast meaning approximately two weeks from the time I mail it. Sometimes postcards will actually get in within a week. Postcards don’t need to be opened and checked for postage stamps and contraband, so they get sorted into the yard bags a lot faster. I’ve already told your grandfather about this. All they need are your CDCR number and your room assignment. I’ve also given your grandfather the rundown on how to get those two pieces of information as fast as possible. If the CDCR number and room assignment aren’t on the mail, it can take extra double time to get any piece of mail to you – and, in fact, they could let it sit for a few months and then send it back to the sender. So it’s really, REALLY important for anyone who writes to you to put your name, CDCR number, and room assignment on the mail. Even if you get moved to another room while the mail is working it’s way to you, it’s easier for it to follow you…. even though re-routing can also take a while. It’s still faster than no room assignment number. Basically, when the room assignment isn’t on the envelope, it goes into the FORGET IT FOR NOW file…..
Let’s see, what else? Well, there is a ton of stuff, and the ‘orientation’ doesn’t really help much. They hand you a package of information, and don’t really explain much. The things you really need to know certainly aren’t in the materials….they’re the little bits of common wisdom that you’ll just have to pick up. For instance, you can have the medical people give you a form that you sign, allowing your family to discuss your medical information with them. You need to ask for it; I don’t think they automatically offer it to you. I’ll send you a sample copy along with this note, so you know what to ask for. If you don’t get this done during intake, you can get ‘ducated’ to do it at Medical some other time. They use a ‘ducat’ system to allow you to do things….everything from seeing a counselor to going to the commissary to doing your laundry, etc., etc. By the way, the counselors are swamped all the time. They are there to help with basic paperwork that has to do with you assignments, etc. You’ll need to go through them if you need to get a paper notarized, or when you’re arranging for parole. They are essentially administrative secretaries, and I understand that each one is currently handling way more inmates than they can actually handle. So be polite, but be persistant.
Finally, phone calls. When you get to VSPW, you MAY NOT use the phone. You have to earn the right to use the phone on Receiving. You basically have to find a volunteer job to do, and after 20 hours, they’ll allow you to use the phone one time. It won’t count toward release or anything like that, but you’ll be able to get a chance to use the phone after a couple of weeks. There aren't enough jobs to go around, and this may not be something that everyone is interested in doing.
Once you’re assigned to a yard and program, you should be able to sign up for phone calls. You may actually be able to use the phone before you leave A Yard (once they move you off the main receiving building into one of the other A Yard buildings). There's a process of signing up ahead of time. I think they have 15 minute slots. However, it may be difficult to actually make your time slot, due to lockdowns, schedule problems, etc. Additionally, there are always people waiting to use the phone, and it’s pretty noisy and crazy (well, you’ve probably experienced the phone scene at the county level….), but you can call collect out to your family at that point. Expect that to take a couple of months. Also, your family will have to deal with the telephone company that owns the current phone contract with California prisons. Your family will probably have to sign up with the current phone company (it was MCI, but now it's Global TelCom) and have a sinking fund in order to receive phone calls from you, but that won’t happen right at first. Phone calls are also very expensive. You should try to keep in touch with your family via mail. They'll appreciate it, and hopefully they'll also write to you on a regular basis.
Well, this turned out to be a heck-of-a-lot longer than I expected when I first sat down to write. I’m including a couple of printouts from our website, information on quarterly packages and mail, and a copy of our February IFC minutes. I hope this catches you before you get sent off.
If you have any questions, or would like to keep in touch, feel free. I’d be glad to send you regular IFC minutes once you’re at the state level, if you’re at VSPW, or hook you up with the CCWF IFC.
Enuf! Please tell your grandfather that I sent something in to you, okay? Thanks!
Sincerely,
N Rubinstein
VSPW IFC volunteer
I hope that this letter to a new inmate will help answer some basic questions about "what it's like" inside. For a new prisoner, any information is a God-send.
You can see a copy of the Orientation Handbook in another section of this website. You should look at it to see what your loved one is being told. It will help you understand what she is dealing with.
