Who said “releasing California prisoners” is a bad idea?
There might be a means to saving millions of dollars by releasing hundreds – if not thousands – of prisoners from the California Prison System if the state embraces medical parole and a few private prisons. The state’s actual savings could be between $100-200 million annually. I know it’s a drop in the bucket, but it’s a good start to some sort of sanity in Sacramento. There is a piece of legislation flowing through the state senate that could provide nearly 700 medically impacted prisoners their parole from state correctional incarceration, and place them into private sector oversight under what is being described as “medical parole.” The Sacramento Bee reported that the six-month cost for a prisoner who is in a persistent vegetative state is nearly $1 million annually. It costs the tax payers approximately $421,000 for correctional medical care and over $410,000 for “triple-guarding” him as he lay immobile in his hospital bed. Under medical parole (SB 1399) if a prisoner has a signif
