Holli Coulman, a former inmate turned prison consultant with clients in the Federal Correctional Institution in Dublin where the actor is currently being held, told the Daily Mail that she is “doing okay,” but is very concerned about the possibility of contracting coronavirus during her stay.
“She’s not crying every night, but I have been told she has high anxiety,” Coulman said. “Not about the prisoners, but the COVID and the issues with that.” Currently, per the Daily Mail, the prison has administered 326 tests with only 16 coming back positive and 12 cases pending.
Loughlin is also reportedly feeling increasingly homesick after phone calls, as well as showers, were cut to just three times a week in order to better enforce social distancing guidelines, limiting not only her access to her family but also her legal counsel.
Family visitations, which were set to resume on October 15, have also been suspended after the infection rate in Alameda County, where the prison is located, increased. According to the Daily Mail, meal options have been limited as well to dry cereal and fruit for breakfast and peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwiches for lunch and dinner.
Coulman says the reality of daily life in prison has been a bit of a shock to Loughlin. “It’s not being able to go and pick up the phone when the phones are supposed to be on and go call somebody. She’s alone,” Coulman explains. “From a nice home to laying on a mat wearing a uniform. You’re wearing a uniform that is a men’s uniform. She’s wearing boots. Not Gucci shoes, she’s wearing boots.
These are things she’s not used to.” After spending her first two weeks in quarantine, the actor has now been released into the general population. But because of the lockdown, her daily routine is not all that different as inmates are confined to their four-person cells and banned from working.
“Dublin is very small—it is a stand-alone [facility],” Coulman adds. “It is one of the older prisons in the U.S., so inside it is like a rundown community college government building with old tile, old lights, fluorescence. It’s dirty.
You never can get rid of the dirt. It is not a pleasant place. They do have some grass in the prison grounds, but if you can just imagine, it’s old furniture, metal furniture, nothing aesthetically, remotely modern.”
Loughlin’s husband, Mossimo Giannulli, has also just begun serving his five-month prison sentence on November 19 at FCI Lompoc near Santa Barbara. He, too, will spend his first two weeks in quarantine as the prison has had, according to the Daily Mail, a far worse time with the coronavirus than Dublin, with 944 inmates tested and 701 positive results.
Original Article: vanityfair