A Prisoner’s Cost to Himself and Society

Re “Ripe for Cutting: Prison Budgets,” Opinion, Feb. 10: Glad to see someone saying the unspeakable. The authors could have also mentioned that Gov. Gray Davis refuses to approve his own parole board’s recommendations for release of a few qualified, very long-serving “term to lifers”--I mean the perhaps 350 out of the almost 20,000 prisoners who have sentences, with the possibility of parole, of seven to life, 15 to life, 25 to life.

Believe me, if the parole board, which is almost exclusively made up of former law enforcement people, recommends someone for parole, it means that that individual has jumped through a lot of hoops, including public safety. But Davis is held back from allowing the parole process to function normally by his political timidity and by his deep financial obligation to prison interests.

Let’s see, 350 prisoners times the $25,607 it costs annually for incarceration comes to $8,962,450 that could be cut from the prison budget and added to education or health care. Ripe indeed.

Deborah D. Jimenez

Santa Rosa

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I agree with the heart of your article. Prison costs must be reduced. But your solution is plain wrong. Ronald Reagan reduced the state budget by closing minimum security facilities and initiating a probation subsidy program to provide “punishment” for nonviolent offenders in the community. This led to a huge rise in crime in the state and ultimately led police chiefs like Ed Davis to lead a call for greater incarceration of all felons. The “determinate” sentencing policy of 1977 was the result of this call.

Now The Times and many others call for reduction of “three strikes” and the use of prisons in an effort to cut costs. But this will not cut costs. The costs will merely be transferred to insurance premiums as crimes increase, as the vast majority of prisoners do not want to get out of prison. One-third don’t want to get out at all. One-third like an occasional vacation, but go on parole with every intention of returning as soon as possible, preferably to the same prison. Then you have a third who really want to get out and stay out. But they soon find out that the outside is a pretty inhospitable place for ex-cons who have $200 in their pockets to hold them until their first paycheck.

Crime’s down. Keep locking people up who need it. But make the lockup less costly. And, if you don’t want them to feel the need to return to prison, add the cost of education.

I earned a college degree through the SOL-AP program at Soledad Prison from San Jose State. I’ve been out for 13 years. That’s a year longer than I was inside. And not even a traffic ticket in those 13 years.

W.K. Murphy

Van Nuys

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Suggestions made for cutting prisons by the Justice Policy Institute make a lot of sense. Every necessary dollar spent on prisons means less money for education in our current budget deficit crisis. Why not also release older, deserving prisoners, say 50 or older, who are eligible for parole and who studies show are extremely unlikely to offer any threat to society? These older prisoners also require greater medical attention at a considerable cost to taxpayers.

W. Earl Haberlin

La Canada