Balancing the Budget By Releasing Prisoners

The Governator is threatening to turn 20,000 prisoners loose if he doesn't get the extra tax money he wants:

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) - -- (12/21/07) -- The Sacramento Bee reports California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is considering releasing more than 20,000 low-risk prison inmates early as a way to save money amid a budget crisis.

The newspaper reports only nonviolent offenders would be eligible for the program. Inmates would have to have less than 20 months left on their terms to participate. Sex offenders wouldn't be included in the plan.

The governor's office says Schwarzenegger hasn't made a final decision and the proposal is one of many being considered to help deal with the state's budget deficit. It's estimated to be as much as 14 billion dollars over the next two fiscal years.

Let's see, the recidivism rate in California prisons is something like 70% which means we can count on about 14,000 of those guys committing new crimes against the citizens of California. Why don't we just clean out death row first and then see what we have left over? It costs a lot to keep those guys in lawyers.

This is a very typical approach from a big government liberal, which is pretty much what Schwarzenegger has turned out to be. They always threaten to cut police, fire or education or release prisoners first when the budget runs short. I've never heard a politician threaten to cut entitlement programs or the budgets of state legislators when things get thin. They never promise to eliminate programs that aren't working and haven't worked for decades. They never threaten to reduce bureaucracy by getting rid of useless commissions or committees.

I'll bet I could find $14 billion before Christmas if they'd just let me cut out useless state programs.