Grand Opening

Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox is not hardhearted -- or incapable of the grand gesture. Last week he made the grandest gesture of his eleven-month gubernatorial career, turning loose a full 7% of the state's prison population --547 inmates who have three months or less yet to serve -- for Christmas at home.

While it is a common practice for Governors to grant Christmastime reprieves, no one can remember the release of such a huge batch of prisoners at any one time.-o Maddox, however, was so pleased by the success of his discharge of 147 teen-age inmates in September (only nine have since had difficulty with the law) that he plans to make wholesale opening of prisons a Georgia yuletime tradition. "We realize," he said, "that in releasing this many, some will slip up. But most of all we are concerned with those who will not." This is his way, Maddox added, of saying "Merry Christmas to these people and their families."

-o Texas' Ma Ferguson is probably Maddox's closest competitor. In two years in office (1925-27), she gave more than 3,000 prisoners their freedom.

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