For much of last year, Gov. Jerry Brown and his advisers pored over measures that Brown could take to ease fixed-term sentencing standards he signed into law when he was governor before – and came to regret decades later.

“Determinate sentencing,” Brown said, had contributed to prison crowding and removed incentives for inmates to rehabilitate themselves. He told his advisers he wanted to restructure how the state awards credits for good behavior, giving inmates a greater chance of parole.

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“My sense is this is really close to his heart,” said Joan Petersilia, a criminologist and Stanford Law School professor Brown has previously consulted about criminal justice matters. “I think he feels responsible, given the determinate sentencing law that he signed. But I also think he has lived with this now for 40 years and really understands how the determinate sentencing had all of these unintended consequences that he’s now trying to reverse.”