Plan to release some prisoners

Re “Parole, the right way,” Opinion, Oct. 8

The purpose of prison is to eliminate dangerousness from an individual through lock-up and rehabilitation. If California is intent on releasing dangerous felons, we have definitely failed in that mission. The state should scrutinize inmates to determine levels of dangerousness and, when it finds an inmate to be a low risk, release him.

Nedra Lynette

Inglewood

Joan Petersilia ignores the fact that sex offenders are the least likely to offend again. Her thinking does not enhance public safety; it enhances the reelection of backward-thinking legislators. Criminology has not invented a single deterrent for any type of crime. Rather, it has multiplied exponentially the number of behaviors classified as crimes, continually upgraded infractions to misdemeanors and misdemeanors to felonies, taken sentencing discretion away from judges with one-size-fits-all punishments and raised the ceiling for sentences far above the punishment fitting the crime.

Roger William Brown

Sylmar