To the editor: The article observes that of the 1,963 “lifers” paroled under Gov. Jerry Brown’s administration, 33 returned “to prison or jail” after being “accused” of various offenses, whereas according to a study we conducted, of 860 lifers released from 1995 to 2010, five were returned to prison “for new felony charges.”

A reader may be given the wrong impression that the recidivism rate for lifer parolees has roughly tripled. The 33 mixes those returned for technical parole violations with those convicted of new crimes — indeed, one of the article’s examples is a parolee who absconded from supervision (a parole violation).
By contrast, our study refers to parolees convicted of new felonies.