CDCR continues to shut down in person and video visits for months at a time for Covid while continuing to rapid test incarcerated persons daily for work. Some facilities have shut down entire yards and buildings for 3 positives tests.

Majority of the incarcerated population is vaccinated and boosted while COs and staff continue to refuse vaccinations. While the rest of the state has gone back to work and school, CDCR inmates are still being denied visits, daily programming, mail and even education but are still sent to work.

Letter writing, emails and calls are not working.

Incarcerated individuals are STILL human beings deserving of meaningful human connections that are vital to rehabilitation, mental health and overall lowers incident rates and fighting amongst the population.

The rest of the state has gone back to work or school. The current CDCR protocols no longer align with the rest of the state or the majority of businesses and public institutions. If rapid testing is available for incarcerated people to go to work they should be available for visits! Only actual positive cases should be quarantined. The shutdown of programming and visits are having extremely detrimental affects on the incarcerated population and their families, especially children with an incarcerated parent.

Our proposed solution: make rapid testing available for visits and only quarantine actual positive cases instead of shutting down entire buildings, yards, or blocks. If incarcerated persons are well enough to work and work in other areas of their facilities outside of their designated areas, then they should be able to visit their loved ones.

We have dealt with a year long shutdown from visiting. We have delt with a scheduling system that was not working correctly for months and still has issues that are leaving certain families at a disadvantage to scheduling appointments and having access to their loved ones. We lost a day of in person visits to video visits, which are NOT the same as an in person visit.

Enough is enough!

Visitation and regular contact with loved ones has a proven positive impact on the mental and emotional well-being of incarcerated people and aides in rehabilitation.  Please show your support by signing this petition and be the voice for the thousands of human beings and families being impacted by these shutdowns.