The Los Angeles Times raised all sorts of interesting questions yesterday with a blog about the possibility  Pulp Fiction screenwriter Roger Avary could be tweeting from Ventura County Jail.

Questions remain about this story, but so far, I've found one conflicting fact. He's not in Ventura County Jail. Also, we don't know for sure the twitter account is even his. I'll get back to both those things.

Before we go on, let's take a step back. Avery, who won an Academy Award for Pulp Fiction (1994), was arrested Jan. 14, 2008 on suspicion of felony drunken driving an vehicular manslaughter following an Ojai area car crash that killed a friend from Italy and seriously injured his wife. In August of this year, he pleaded guilty to gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated and drunken driving in connection with the crash. On Sept. 30, he was sentenced to a year in jail.

Speculation arose that Avary was tweeting from jail when someone on twitter who purports to be him began tweeting about being in custody. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2009/11/avary-twitter-prison.html

The LA Times could not confirm it was actually his account. I have not been able to confirm it either, since his lawyer wouldn't talk about it, I couldn't reach Avary himself, and a call to a firm that represents him was not immediately returned. The blog links to a web page that is listed as his by a web site called www.nnbd.com, but I'm still not comfortable with that. I prefer to look at this story with a more critical eye. You'll see why.

The tweets are well-written and evocative, with supposed observations about the experience of being in jail. Here are some examples:

- "The loudspeaker in each cell blurts out commands ("Number 34 report to control!") and is able to listen in on inmate conversations. 10:22AM Oct. 21 from Twitterrific"
- " "It's your birthday!" announces that #34 is to receive a random strip-down and cavity search to be performed by a leering, rotund officer. 9:59 AM Nov. 6th from web"
- "Yeyo was released at midnight. He was kind when #34 was first so afraid -- and taught him the "Politics". 'Tis bittersweet to see him go. 9:13 AM Nov. 14 from web"
- "A ball of Heroin tar is found on an inmate. The guards react lightening-fast, locking down the facility and "rolling up" those responsible. 9:06 AM Nov. 21 from web"

Nowhere, however, in the 24 entries since Oct. 29 does the writer use the word "jail."

The LA Times blog brought up questions about access of inmates to the internet, and many others, but it turns out that Avary isn't on constant lockdown.

Avary reported to Ventura County Jail on Oct. 26 and was released the same day, said Capt. Ross Bonfiglio, a spokesman for the Ventura County Sheriff's Department. Now, Avary is not out of custody completely, he's on work furlough, a program that allows inmates to continue going to work during the day and return to custody at night.

Not any inmate can get into work furlough, and people in custody are under the control of Ventura County Probation, not the Sheriff's Department. Unlike jail inmates, people on work furlough are in custody on the grounds of the Camarillo Airport. They are not allowed to have computers or cell phones in the facility, according to the Probation Agency.

When I asked Avary's lawyer, Mark Werksman, about the twitter issue, he said he didn't know anything about it.

"I don't know anything about it," Werksman said. "I don't think it's true."

Shortly afterward, he ended the conversation, saying he had nothing to say.

Now, this could all be real, but a lot about it makes me skeptical. I'm sure work furlough is no picnic, but I have serious doubts that tweets like the following would be about a program that allows inmates to leave during the day:

"Repoman, who is Emilio Estevez's doppelganger, teaches #34 how to slimjim and hotwire a car..."

"Papa Smurf is in for a white collar crime that I view almost as a duty against corporate tyranny. Hardly an infraction worth his punishment."

I can almost hear Morgan Freeman's narration from the Shawshank Redemption echoing through these posts. Something doesn't seem to add up.

Writing today's article about inmate voting reminded me that I wanted to explain the difference between jail and prison.

Before I started working the police beat, I thought jail and prison were synonyms. That's a common misperception.

If jail and prison were being described in one of those SAT analogies, the question might look like this:

JAIL is to PRISON as COUNTY is to
a)    world
b)    country
c)    state
d)    elephant
e)    all of the above

Answer: C - State.

County sheriff's departments operate jails, which house people after they are arrested, while awaiting trial, and for shorter sentences.

Prisons house people who are convicted and sentenced.

The vast majority of people in local jail are unsentenced. This week, there were 1678 people in local jail, and 1164 of them had not been sentenced, according to the Sheriff's department.

The distinction between jail and prison is very important for understanding inmate voting rights because many inmates in California jails have the right to vote, but those serving sentences in state prison do not.

When you get down to the brass tacks of the law, things get complicated. People on parole are not eligible to vote, but people sentenced to felony probation are.

Parole and probation are sometimes confused, but there are significant differences.

Parole is related to state prison time. An inmate goes on parole after serving prison time.

Convicts can be sentenced to serve jail time then go on county probation, or they can simply be given probation.

Probation and parole are similar in that they include a set of conditions a person is subject to, and people on parole and probation are supervised by correctional officers who aim to make sure they don't commit new crimes. Committing a crime, in addition to being illegal, obviously, will also constitute a parole or probation violation. Probation and parole can also include search terms, which allow police to search a person without a warrant.

Because of the difference between jail and prison, it's not technically correct to call someone in jail a "prisoner."

For newspaper purposes, a person in jail is an inmate, and a person in prison is a prisoner. However, a person in prison is also an inmate.