When You Think About It, 8800 Dangerous Felons Aren't All That Much

So California, after having built prisons until it just can't build no more, has been ordered to release 10,000 inmates from its overcrowded prisons.

How you can go on a prison-building spree and still not have enough prisons seems to be unaddressed in the media. But I digress.

Anywho, the Golden State's got to open the pressure relief valve at the prisons and let 10,000 go. Using some basic guidelines: inmates who committed nonviolent crimes, have a low risk of committing new crimes once out of prison, are not tied to a prison gang and have less than a year left to serve on their sentence, they've found 1200 such. That leaves 8800 more to release, albeit of, how shall we say it, less savory quality.

Now that may seem like a lot, but you have to remember, California is a big state. We've got 163,696 square miles of space. That works out to 18.6 square miles per dangerous, newly-released felon. If you live in the state, your chances of running into one of these guys is practically nil! Just imagine, there you are, fenced into an area of 18.6 square miles. Somewhere in that space is a dangerous criminal. Think of it as a hide-and-go-seek game. Surely you can manage to stay concealed for years, even if the criminal is really, really smart and knows all the good hiding places.

Seriously, you have nothing to worry about.

Unless you're somewhere like Plaster City where there aren't too many places to hide. Then you're screwed.
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