Letters: Get out of jail early

Re “A strong hand on prisons,” Column, July 1

Gov. Jerry Brown may ostensibly champion all the happy talk about novel strategies for rehabilitating felons. But the governor’s new corrections secretary, Jeff Beard, knows from his stint as Pennsylvania’s prisons chief that early releases of inmates can prove counterproductive.

A recently published report of recidivism experienced during Beard’s tenure documents that Pennsylvania inmates who were given early releases to halfway houses were more likely to return to crime than inmates who were released directly to the street.

It’s understandable that the Brown administration would want to put a positive spin on its attempts to comply with a federal court order to further reduce California’s prison population. But the prison overcrowding quandary raises inconvenient questions yet to be answered.

Whether the state can prevent an unprecedented crime wave thanks to realignment appears most doubtful.

Gloria Martel

Los Angeles

Recently we’ve seen the results of coddling prison inmates with early releases. They quickly learn that release constraints can be flouted with relative impunity. That much has become apparent since realignment effectively precluded returning released felons to prison for any misdeed short of a serious felony.

No one seems willing to admit that with California’s constantly expanding population, we have just two choices: either expand prison capacity and mental healthcare facilities, or tolerate increased crime.

The first choice requires new budgetary outlays, a nonstarter in this political era. The second choice doesn’t seem to concern the “liberal federal judges” who ordered Brown to release more prisoners, and who probably reside far from neighborhoods populated by felons released early from prison.

That leaves the rest of us to deal with the consequences.

Joyce Howerton

Lompoc, Calif.

ALSO:

Letters: L.A.’s tax giveaway to Westfield

Letters: What to do about Edward Snowden

Letters: Sexual ‘preference’? That’s so 1970s