1) The zero chance of parole advertised by billboards for career and gun criminals is not limited to those types of offenders. They apply to virtually all criminals in the federal system. There is no parole, period.

2) It is about time that such a policy is advertised. Usually, even low-level drug offenders and their families are blind-sided in the federal system of brutally long mandatory sentences without possibility of parole because they are unaware of them.

3) Why do we need to insist on “no possibility of parole?”

Some of us think that a sane sentence rendered by a discretionary judge, less time off for good behavior and progress toward rehabilitation, is the fairest term of imprisonment achievable. True, there may be many inmates who may never earn parole, but if the hope is available, there will be an incentive for most to work to achieve it.

In a Dan Jones survey in Utah in 2003, almost two-thirds of respondents who registered an opinion supported the cause of parole. Both The Tribune and the other Salt Lake daily have editorialized repeatedly against mandatory minimum sentences without the possibility of parole.

Burton Stringfellow

Salt Lake City