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Allow parole for Pennsylvania lifers

2 min read

Have you ever heard of Charles Manson? The book “Helter Skelter” details how he masterminded the savage Tate-LaBianca slayings in the 1960s.

Manson is now a California prisoner serving a life sentence without parole eligibility. Of course, nobody is losing any sleep worrying about him ever being released. A maximum sentence of life, even with parole eligibility, is enough to keep remorseless and incorrigible killers incarcerated until they die.

However, since California lifers have parole eligibility, innocent people who have been wrongly convicted and sentenced to life have some hope of being humanely released after serving about 25 years. The same goes for lifers who have been sufficiently punished with a quarter-century of imprisonment. On average, California lifers convicted of first-degree murders who have demonstrated real remorse and rehabilitation are serving about 28 years before being safely released on parole, saving California taxpayers billions of dollars.

In stark contrast, most Harrisburg politicians consider all Pennsylvania lifers to be even worse than Charles Manson by insisting “life means life,” without any possibility of parole. It doesn’t matter how remorseful and rehabilitated Pennsylvania lifers may be. It doesn’t matter if they’ve been model prisoners for decades and are now harmless old men and women who long ago aged out of crime and could be safely released on parole.

Criminal acts must be punished. But when our lawmakers lay such an unequal and heavy hand on Pennsylvanians who have committed precisely the same or lesser offenses as Californians, the patent inhumanity is intolerably repugnant.

Bert Hudson

Waynesburg

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