On September 28,Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed into law a bill that would allow for the release of comatose and physically incapacitated inmates. The medical parole law would immediately affect 32 inmates, at a savings of $200 million. Most of those being released are under the care of a hospital or nursing home at the cost of $5,800 a day. Even though inmates are comatose or incapacitated they still require guards to watch them, taking correctional officers away from areas where they were much more needed.
Medical parole is estimated to create a savings of at least $46 million dollars annually. According to the Los Angeles Times, a group California Republican lawmakers opposed the bill, claiming too many prisoners would be released as a cost-cutting measure. The eligibility of approximately 1,000 inmates will be considered for the medical parole program. The bill’s author, Senator Mark Leno (D-San Francisco) included the provision that all potentially eligible inmates would be thoroughly screened to assure that they are not a public safety risk. Before release on medical parole, each inmate would have to gain approval from the State Board of Parole Hearings. Those sentenced to death or to life without possibility of parole would not be eligible.
On the same day that he signed the medical parole bill, Governor Schwarzenegger also cut back on a measure that allowed county jail inmates to earn good-time/work-time credits of one-half of their sentences. Citing concerns from the law enforcement sector that released inmates were “flooding” the streets, Schwarzenegger reduced the credits to one-third of a sentence, ignoring the fact that these county jail inmates are going to be released anyway. Keeping them detained longer will only add to the same budget that the governor sought to reduce with medical paroles.
Source: Los Angeles Times
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