The Oct. 27 story “State Hopes New Prisons, Early Release Cut Crowding” is an excellent look at the difficulty our state prison system is having with a prison population bursting at the seams and the attempts being made to reduce it.

Unfortunately, no one can say for sure whether the state can reduce the population, and the opening of new state prisons is still several years away. Hope is one thing. History tells us the population goes only one way — up. While the state prison population is zooming past 47,000 inmates, the Department of Corrections is planning on adding nearly 1,500 beds to accommodate prisoners who have had their parole blocked by Gov. Ed Rendell.

Read the rest of the letter here.