Chapter 54 Admission

Pelican Bay Prison is a prison, but not an ordinary one; it is the highest-security prison in the United States.

Because Pelican Bay Prison houses the largest number of felons in the United States, such as murderers, drug dealers, and gang members, only those who have committed such serious crimes are incarcerated there.

Los Angeles Prison holds more than eighteen thousand inmates, but most of these inmates have committed minor offenses—they get locked up for a month or two and then are released, and there are quite a few who are locked up for two or three, five or six years, but there are not many real felons.

As for Pelican Bay Prison, it has a total of about three thousand inmates, at least a thousand of whom are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole. Of the remaining two thousand, half are serving terms of fifteen years or more. Among the remaining thousand or so inmates, a five-year sentence is considered short.