Sickos keep walking early under Newsom’s soft parole law

Fifty years old and twenty years served. That's the bar now for a second look at some of the worst crime California has on the books, and the board apparently keeps clearing it for people the public thought were gone for good. When a program is built around age and time served rather than the nature of the crime or genuine evidence of change, you get exactly this outcome: violent offenders walking out because a birthday and a calendar date said they could.

Nobody serious argues against redemption. People change, sentences can be excessive, and there's a real conversation to have about elderly inmates who pose no threat and cost the state a fortune to house. But that conversation requires actual case-by-case judgment, not a blanket formula that treats a 51-year-old who murdered someone the same as a 51-year-old who didn't. The Elderly Parole Program isn't discernment. It's a release valve dressed up as reform.

Newsom's people will say this is about compassion and fiscal responsibility, and maybe some of that is sincere. But compassion for the inmate can't come at the cost of the victims and families who were promised these sentences meant something. Every time one of these releases makes headlines because the person goes on to reoffend, that promise gets a little more hollow.

If the state wants to run a real parole reform effort, fine, but call it what it is and build in the safeguards that actually matter, like offense type and risk assessment, not just a countdown clock. Right now the message being sent is that age is rehabilitation. It isn't, and Californians who feel less safe because of it aren't being unreasonable. They're paying attention.