February 17, 2014
Monday AM

Pablo Piña D-28079
D-2 122 SHU
P.O. Box 7500
Crescent City, CA 95531

Re: Governor Jerry Brown and CDCR Given Two More Years To Lower Prison Population

Greetings.

First of all, I was reading in the San Francisco Chronicle that after all the pleading and begging for more time to comply with the Supreme Court's order to reduce the prison population. Why the courts continue to give these folks extensions and more extensions and never follow through with their (court's) threats to take over the prison system and force reduction in the overcrowded prisons and provide better medical treatment.

But some bureaucrats are saying that Governor Brown has the time to reconsider his position on how California officials should begin reducing the population in their prisons. That means that California now has until June 2015 to come up with solutions. But if they keep granting extensions instead of enforcing the court's orders, California is going to drag this on and on.

This is what they do. They have done this delay game for years. Decades. They have always got away with it. And so they did it again.

The court said California should not be transferring inmates out of state to erase the overcrowding. But they can open up a private prison in California. What the court did, though, which is good for inmates, is accept several measures proposed by the governor's office and state lawmakers to reduce overcrowding. These include:
1. Increasing good time credits to help reduce sentences for non-violent offenders.
2. Expand parole considerations for medically incapacitate inmates, grating parole for those 60 years and older who have spent at least 25 years in prison. And speeding up parole for those already found suitable.
3. Appointing a compliance officer who could order the immediate release of inmates if the state failed to meet interim population goals set by the court during the next two years.

This is good, but it's a topic that's been discussed over and over but not taken up by the governor's office. Now the governor is considering these options and, if true, they can become a reality.

Governor Brown is the best governor California has ever had. I've said it before and I say it again. He will eventually do what's right. And that would be to release a lot of the aging prisoners in California prisons. Most of us have at least 30 years in prisons. There's no reason to keep us in prison.

The parole board expects us to have a job lined up and a place to stay upon release. What they don't take into consideration is the inability for someone over 50 years old to find employment, let alone an ex-con over 50. The parole board denies parole to many based on disciplinary incidents they committed early on in their prison term. That's old news. Why continue to hold something they did 10, 15 years ago and use it to say "I'm still a violent person"? Then not consider the facts of why I did what I did. If I put my foot in someone's ass, it's probably because the guy had it coming. I have never just went around assaulting other inmates just because they were there. But the parole board does not consider anything except that I violated the law of prison regulations.

This is a step in the right direction, but giving California two more years to look for more excuses was not very smart. A lot can happen in those two years, and prison officials have been known to instigate unrest amongst prisoners.