California to limit medical parole to inmates on ventilators
Fox News
A new California policy could send dozens of quadriplegic, paraplegic or otherwise permanently incapacitated inmates from nursing homes back to state prisons. Prison officials will limit medical parole to inmates who are so ill that they need ventilators to breathe.
Steve Fama, an attorney with the nonprofit Prison Law Office, said the court-appointed federal office that controls health care in California prisons told him the change could affect about 70 of the 210 inmates approved for medical parole under the current system, started in 2014.
"It’d be an awful shame if those people were returned to prison," Fama said. "Those patients have been proven not to need a prison setting given their medical conditions."
The policy shift comes as the state has been reducing its prison population due to the coronavirus pandemic, as well as a more general push from voters and legislators to free older and infirm inmates who are less likely to commit new crimes.