A.P., you are the first prison guy I know who says that good time does not encourage good behavior. I have talked to lots of TDC people, and to a man, they claim that good time is a major tool for controlling inmates.

I am a strong believer in good time. But it has to be rational. If Lifers are released in 7 years, it means that sentences are pretty meaningless. And when parolees are never revoked unless they are convicted of a new felony, then parole becomes a joke. A parolee who tests positive for drugs is not keeping his side of the bargain. In addition to using drugs, he is obviously associating with criminals, and he is continuing in his criminal way of life.

I think many of us would have fewer problems with early release from prison if parole was strict, and did not hesitate to send back to the joint parolees who reverted back to the dark side. By that I mean using drugs, hanging out with criminals, not working, as well as committing new crimes. Parole should be a very conditional release from prison: we'll let you out, but only if you stay out of trouble, get a job, support your dependents, pay restitution, etc. etc.

But I have a newsflash: certain members of the legislature have been extremely critical of the parole board because they have not released "non violent" offenders at a fast enough rate. During the last legislative session, there was even a joint meeting of the house and the senate to hear a report from Dr. Tony Fabelo about how broken the prison system is. His PowerPoint presentation, which you can see at the state legislature's website, makes a big deal about how Parole is not meeting their own guidelines for releasing "non-violent" inmates. I believe the early release of inmates you are seeing now are a result of the legislature not building more prisons, and legislative pressure on the Parole Board to put more inmates on parole and not revoke them when they blow off parole rules.

Mind you, the legislators are always careful to specify that only "non-violent offenders" should be shown the prison door as soon as possible. They are all tough guys when it comes to violent offenders. And what is a "non-violent offender"? One who is under sentence for a non-violent crime. Al Capone would be classified as a "non-violent offender" under this definition.

Parole is not the only outfit that is involved in the de-institutionalization of convicts. In the last session, the legislature passed a bill that rewards probation depts. that early terminate probationers, and who send fewer screw-ups to TDC. You may have already noticed the tendency of your probation dept. to not file a violation report until a probationer commits a new felony.

Convicts are going to make choices, good or bad, in spite of so-called dangling carrots. For example, 5 prison murders so far this year -- the latest one (last night) was a G5 in HIGH SECURITY killing his cellmate - he wasn't collecting bonus time, work time, Eastern time or Comp time, but he chose to murder somebody while doing his, how do I say it, time.

On July 24 this year, a G2 convict, that's the highest non-trusty classification a prisoner can get, one who amasses all kinds of time credits and carrots and priviliges, priveliges, priv...bonuses, murdered his cellmate.

On June 25 this year, another bad, carrotless convict murdered his cellmate.

On May 19 this year, a G2, carrot-laden convict, serving time for Murder of all things, killed another convict who happened to be 69 years old. No promise of parole or good time seems to have stopped that fellow.

At the risk of boring folks, I'll just say that good time, for some inmates probably does motivate them to behave. But, I stand firm on the conviction (pardon the pun) that regardless of promises, bad people will do bad things. The SPU has around 20,000 prison-related prosecutions to illustrate it.