By Just A Guy
Editors Note: Just A Guy is an inmate in a California state prison. His reports run Mondays and Thursdays. He tries to respond to all comments and answer all questions, but communicating from prison can be difficult, so be patient. You can read his last column, and links to previous columns, here.
What is it with these politicians and the public and early releases of prisoners and the hysteria surrounding all of it? I just don’t get it.
Now, maybe I’m not the most objective fellow about the whole thing, but I would like to think that I’m pragmatic to some extent. And while I believe myself to be relatively intelligent, and even sensible, at times I start to question my own sanity because I see the choices California is making as insane — yet the state is making them anyway. If I were making those same choices I would be thrown in jail … shit, I’m already here. Doh!
Like, wow, if my elderly Alzheimer’s-ridden family member lived with me and I just stopped feeding, bathing, and taking care of him or her I would be arrested and charged with felony neglect, elderly abuse or some such thing. Why should it be any different if the state of California does that same thing?
In the case of an individual, protective services would come out, check out the home, make a report, give recommendations and all sorts of bureaucratic bullshit would happen as paperwork flowed and rubber stamps pressed down on forms written in incomprehensible legalese that Johnny Fucking Cochran wouldn’t be able to decode without an Enigma machine and an army of junior lawyers bringing up the rear as support services.
And that brings me to Support Services. In prison, Support Services are programs that often employ the lower-security inmates at lower-security institutions, who support the maintenance and running of higher-security prisons where all the really “bad” guys are. Oh, Support Services also supports various elements of the California government like the California Department of Forestry, where a bunch of us hardened criminals fight California’s fires. The majority of people in lower-security institutions and in fire camps run by CDF are non-violent/non-serious offenders, a good portion of whom have less than a year left on their sentences — and therefore, will be eligible for early release according to Arnold’s plan to commute the sentences of non-violent/non-serious offenders with less than a year left.