Regarding your editorial "The Supreme Court's Prison Break" (May 24): The court-ordered release of inmates in California is really the result of a lack of leadership, not a Supreme Court decision. In the early 1980s a federal judge ordered the release of detainees from New York City jails for similar reasons of overcrowding. The prisoners released were, on paper, supposed to be nonviolent. Soon after the release, one of the freed prisoners committed a heinous crime. Mayor Ed Koch then gave the order that there were to be no more releases. From that day on there were none.

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