Crank: Big fan of your site.

But in this post, you comment on these men only in the context of the crimes they committed and ignore what may or may not have happened to them in jail. Are they rehabilitated? Did they pay their debt to society (perhaps you believe that for some crimes that debt can never be paid)? Is the cost of keeping them in prison too high relative to the benefits? Was Pataki's hard line on parole crowding the prisons, creating problems far beyond the system's ability to cope with them? Certainly it is not an easy decision to release convicted killers from jail, but after decades behind bars it is certainly possible there is no benefit to retaining these middle-aged criminals as wards of the state.

Certainly the criminal justice system in America is terribly broken, and certainly tragedies that befall families at the hands of criminals can never be forgiven, but posts that aim to strike fear and demonize politicians such as Spitzer (of whom I am no fan) as being "soft on crime" add very little to the discussion. Indeed, it is the same sort of fear mongering that leads politicians to enact arbitrary and somewhat silly laws such as three-strikes-and-you're-out and heightened penalties for crack over powder cocaine.

and Spitzer is doing this when he claims NYS has too many prisons and wants to close down surplus facilities

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/nyregion/27prison.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Needless to say, the shuttered facilities are all in Republican counties

Strange - you seem to have left out that 12 of the 19 parole board members are Pataki's appointments.
Or that there is an existing Federal lawsuit that's has a surprising amount of traction regarding Pataki's treatment of the Parole Board as a super-judge.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/30/nyregion/30parole.html?pagewanted=1
"The lawsuit by the inmates charged that prisoners eligible for parole were denied their constitutional rights during the Pataki administration because of what they said was the board’s unwritten policy of rejecting parole in most of the cases solely because of the severity of the crime. The lawsuit said the board failed to also take into account, as required, the degree of remorse or rehabilitation or the likelihood that the inmate would commit another crime if released."

Perhaps more are being released now because the law was not followed by Pataki's administration. Take a look at Friedgood (page 2 of that link). Hopefully with specific sentences means we won't have to hear more of this over the next 20 years.

And as for your list - I'd be hard pressed to believe that among the hundreds released by Pataki there were not the same, or worse.

"Needless to say, the shuttered facilities are all in Republican counties"

Ironman - in that link, it also talked about how Pataki tried to shut down the prisons upstate, for rather similar reasons.
http://www.manhattan-institute.org/html/_nypost-nys_prisons.htm

I'll assume that since upstate is dominated by Republicans, it would be logical that they have similar targets.

I hold no brief for RINO Pataki. Perhaps his animus was against the correction workers union.

I live in Cheshire, CT. I do not want New Yorkers to deal first hand with the same consequences of "progressive" parole policies that created such a disaster in my home town

Dave: google "Cheshire" and "parole" and explain why what NY State is doing makes any sense

The death penalty takes care of overcrowded prisons.