Judge: California must eye earlier parole for sex offenders
SACRAMENTO — California must consider earlier parole for potentially thousands of sex offenders, maybe even those convicted of pimping children, a state judge said Friday.
Sacramento County Superior Court Judge Allen Sumner preliminarily ordered prison officials to rewrite part of the regulations for Proposition 57. The 2016 ballot measure allows consideration of earlier parole for most state prison inmates, but Gov. Jerry Brown promised voters all sex offenders would be excluded.
That goes too far, Sumner said in rejecting Deputy Attorney General Maria Chan’s argument that the ballot measure gave state officials broad discretion to exclude any class of offenders whose release might harm public safety.
“If the voters had intended to exclude all registered sex offenders from early parole consideration under Proposition 57, they presumably would have said so,” Sumner said.
He said the scope of exclusions should be narrowed to only those now serving time for a violent sex offense. And he said the Corrections Department must better define what falls into that category.
The judge said those who already served their time for a sex crime, even a violent one, and now are imprisoned for a different crime should be eligible for early release.