San Francisco – A federal appeals court has upheld a voter-approved measure requiring convicted murderers to wait as long as 15 years between parole hearings.
Proposition 9 in 2008 limited the rights of murderers and other prisoners sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. California law had previously required the parole board to hold hearings once a year after an inmate is first eligible for parole, unless the board cited evidence showing it was unlikely the prisoner would be released for several years. The maximum period between hearings was five years.
The proposition allowed the inmate to get the interval reduced to as little as three years by proving that the board was likely to grant an earlier release date.
Santiago, Chile – Eighty-one inmates died in a severely crowded prison and Chilean President Sebastian Pinera promised Chile will improve conditions for inmates.
Some 53,000 inmates are housed in a prison system built for 32,000. Cause of the fire is being investigated.
Berkeley. – Nearly 25,000 books each year are sent to prisoners by the Prisoners Literature Project, a Berkeley-based collective. Novels, dictionaries and books of poetry are shipped all around the country by volunteers. The organization has provided these books for nearly 30 years in an effort to nurture rehabilitation and encourage education.
