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Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Read my lips, "no early releases from prison"

As day light breaks over the second day of California's epically ugly budget compromise there are signs the deal may yet fall apart on the way to a legislative vote later this week.  The problem is not that draconian cuts in social services to the poor and disabled, the open thievery of county revenues, or the very obvious gimmicks like moving the dates of pay days from one fiscal year to another, its the possibility that some California prisoner, somewhere, may leave a prison early.  According to Matthew Yi's reporting in the SF Chron:

The plan, according to Matt Cate, Schwarzenegger's top prison official, would reduce the prison population this year by 27,000 inmates, some of whom would be released early. The plan includes:

-- Sending thousands of old and sick inmates to non-prison hospitals.

-- Allowing some non-violent, non-sex offending inmates to serve the last year of their sentence in house arrest.

-- Allowing some non-violent inmates to earn time served by receiving GED or vocational training.

-- Creating a sentencing commission to overhaul the state's sentencing laws.

The governor would also begin considering thousands of illegal immigrant inmates who may be turned over to federal authorities for deportation.

Posted by Jonathan Simon on July 22, 2009 at 11:29 AM | Permalink

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Comments

My husband is currenty doing 3 long years in prison for a meth pipe that was left by a renter we had to kick out of our home for using drugs. just a pipe that was it! now tell me that there arnt some people that should be released from california prison. we lost our home and everything! what a joke LET THEM GO!!!!!

Posted by: wendy | Nov 9, 2009 3:43:12 PM

Early release is one way to fix the overburdening of the US prison system.

Posted by: Trueprison | Jul 27, 2009 7:19:35 PM

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