“California To Release All Prisoners Who Seem Nice Enough”

The title of this post is the amusing headline of this piece at The Onion which explains what might well be part of California’s plan to deal with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Plata.  Here is more:

In an effort to reduce prison populations throughout the state, California governor Jerry Brown announced today that he would release all inmates who seemed as though they were nice enough people.

“The goal of this new initiative is to gather a rough first impression of whether or not a prisoner is a decent-enough-seeming person, and to release him or her back into society based solely on that general gut reaction,” said Brown, adding that prison authorities would spend an estimated 12 minutes with each inmate to chat about “this and that” and decide whether or not a prisoner seemed like the friendly sort. “Obviously, some might try to take a swing at the warden in the beginning, but if they calm down from there and maybe smile a few times, they’re probably fine.” 

At press time, officials at San Quentin State Prison had determined that inmate Vincente “Lobo” Díaz came across as slightly eccentric, granted, but basically likable.

Some prior amusing sentencing-related pieces from The Onion:

• “Lethal Injection Ban Leads To Rise In Back-Alley Lethal Injections”
• “Supreme Court Reaches Landmark ‘It Depends’ Ruling”