That is roughly how many days until Richard is returning home.
There is a lot of stigma surrounding jail or prison. The criminal justice system we know today is absolute crap and needs to be revamped. From unfair sentencing to dirty, outdated, obsolete facilities with archaic politics that should not even house any humans let alone an animal, the Supreme Court needs to do better. No one seems to care about this obvious issue as long as it does not affect them. There are people's family members, friends, sons, daughters, mothers, and fathers living in inhumane conditions, and their basic human rights are completely stripped away.
"The right to be free from torture and inhuman treatment is the right that no one should be subjected to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment."-Basic Human Right
I want to affirm the idea that jails or prisons even exist in their current states is a direct contradiction to this human right. God is the only person allowed to judge and should be the only one enforcing punishment. I am not saying we should not have law enforcement or police. I am saying we need a better criminal justice system that makes sense. It needs to actually rehabilitate people not just criminalize and punish those who enter the system. We need to help those who make mistakes, not punish them. No matter how big or small the crime, if there is a way to help someone get better, we owe it to them to try. Instead, we place people in cells, punish them to"the hole", and send them to laces that teach continuously teach crime and violence. Anyone with idle hands for hours every day is bound to get into trouble. Idle hands are the devil's playground. It is like the perfect, twisted capitalistic system to keep problems continuing so they aren't fixed. People need therapy, hope, anger management, substance abuse classes, church, faith, and another perspective on life so they can be a better version of themselves to heal. Watch the Stanford Prison Experiment from the summer of 1971 and witness how even college students fell into a biased, evil system that played out as an "experiment" to house prisoners and has guards take care of them. This experiment that went wrong is all too real to reflect what our jail and prison systems truly embody; control and evil human nature.
Richard asked me to watch a movie on Amazon Prime called Felon which he said was disturbingly real. It was hard to watch but I recommend it to anyone who has been in the system, knows someone who has, or not, to know the harsh realities of how corruption and horrendous systems really are.
One drunken August night in 2022, Richard got into a bar fight while he was beyond intoxicated. Bars in San Diego will overserve to make money and hundreds of dollars later Richard stumbled into an altercation, that escalated and the district attorney in San Diego took a personal interest in charging him.
The night of September 10th, Richard was arrested in Pacific Beach, at his apartment right after we finished doing laundry. One moment we were together and the next he was being taken away in handcuffs with a dozen patrol cars circled around the complex. There was no warrant for Richard's arrest so I am still confused about how he was taken away. I know now some neighbors were waiting for him to be home to call the police. Regardless of the additional details surrounding these neighbors, they unjustly got him arrested and built up this picture of a dangerous, violent, heinous person before he could turn himself in or seek mercy for his actions.
Richard spent weeks in the San Diego Downtown Jail before getting transferred to George Bailey Detention Facility. Bailey is one of the worst jails in California. Richard told me other inmates who were transferred from all over the state came back there and called it the jail you get sent to when you "fuck up again" or get an additional charge after getting sentenced. I heard all about the state food served to inmates. It is either rotten, served raw, or always discolored, while some dishes are even labeled Not For Human Consumption. The actual off-beige facility is dirty, old, and understaffed with broken phones for visitation, one chair for disabled visitors, and only one working video visit section with trash scattered around the trash cans. If you are brave to use the restroom prior to or during the visit you are lucky if there are paper towels or toilet seat covers. I had the pleasure of visiting almost every weekend while he was there and have every single visit paper saved as a reminder of my bravery. The staff was cold, shady visits were going on all around me of other inmates meeting multiple women, and while I visited Richard, we felt so out of place.
There were a few court dates I attended where I could catch a glance of Richard behind a glass while I sat in the back of the courtroom. I made the mistake of throwing up a heart and saying I love you, and got yelled at by the police and threatened to be thrown out of court if I did it again. Richard mentioned on court days, he woke up at 4am to get on a bus, to get to court by 5am, and waited all day in a cold underground cell. Then he was bussed back to the jail hopefully by 8pm to call me. Most of the time, he did not get to call after court but sometimes snuck in a call before going to court around 4am. He was sentenced on January 5 and unfortunately never had an option for bail. I did my best to drive Richard's disabled Mom to every single court date unless she could not walk and come. His sentencing day was by far the worst day.
Currently, Richard is housed at Wasco State Prison in his reception period. Wasco traveling by car is about 4 and a half hours away past Bakersfield. The reception period is when you get transferred from jail to prison to first be put on a 12-14 day quarantine hold to prevent the transmission of COVID-19. After this time is over, you remain in this reception area for up to 90 days to be classified, questioned, assessed, rehoused, and transferred to the end facility to complete the sentenced time. Wasco State Prison does house other inmates who work and run the facility. Others get transferred to prisons, programs, or fire camps through the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation scattered up and down California. Richard was transferred there on 1/25 if I remember correctly. He was accepted into San Luis Obispo Firecamp and also Ventura County Firecamp. Now he is awaiting his last transfer to his final facility.
Richard says the food is edible there, he is no longer housed in a cell, its dormitory style, where he attends school for a few hours a day Monday through Friday, church 3 times a week, and has been studying for his GED. He is staying busy at the prison versus being on lockdown for 24 hours a day like at the jail.
It has been so hard not being able to hug or hold him. We had emails while he was in jail to also stay in contact. I had two emails a day so I used multiple email addresses to write as many as I could. We also went from having 15-minute recorded calls a few times a day to at most several hours a day in the jail to now one phone call a week. Also, upon being transferred to Wasco, we had no phone calls or contact for 14 days. Now we get one phone call timed for 15 minutes once a week. Our calls do not cost money because of COVID whereas in the past you had to pay for them.
Before Richard had gone away, we had been spending a lot of time together and I could not picture my life without him. We had not officially started dating but we had been spending the night, going out to eat often, and playing house as much as we could. We both were getting over our last breakups and gravitated right back to each other.
Every day without one another was a painful reminder of how much we loved each other, we wanted to be together, and we were not going to wait to be together. We got happily married at George Bailey on November 27 with a phone in our ears, a glass between us, surrounded by other strangers visiting their family or friends. Honestly, all that stuff did not bug me or matter. Everyone and everything melted away while I was reading my vows, staring at Richard. It was the happiest day of our lives. Even knowing Richard's only options for clothing were his cleanest white shirt, new blue starchy pants, we could not kiss or touch and, his vows written on yellow paper snuck between his clothes. Both of us reading our vows, looking up between teary eyes, were happy as ever. I married my best friend, my love, someone I truly feel is my soulmate, that God made for me, a charming, sweet, kind, supportive man I had been praying for. He was right there all along.
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