Senate moves to suspend early release program

Feb 10, 2010 | BY DAVID STEVES | registerguard.com

SALEM — After months of criticism of the state’s cost-saving early release of prisoners, the Legislature on Tuesday took the first steps to suspend the program.

The Senate Judiciary Committee approved legislation that will end until mid-2011 the expansion of “earned time” sentence reductions to 30 percent from 20 percent.

And when the state restarts the program, it will no longer allow a lawbreaker to seek a shorter prison sentence unless it’s been five years since he completed a sentence for a violent crime or other offense that has made him ineligible for early release.

That goes much further than what was originally proposed in a bill before the Legislature when it convened Feb. 1. That bill would have kept the expanded earned-time program, but added to the list of crimes for which an offender would be ineligible for the added 10 percent off his sentence.

Judiciary Committee Chairman and state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, said the changes were necessary to address concerns about the original 2009 legislation expanding earned time to 30 percent in order to reduce prison populations and shift saved corrections money to other public safety work. Those concerns included that certain types of crimes, such as assaulting a police officer and fleeing the scene of a vehicular homicide, were eligible for sentence reduction, along with less serious crimes such as drug possession and theft.

Another complaint was that the expanded earned time was available retroactively to those already serving time — and in some instances to prisoners who were eligible for a reduced sentence on a less serious crime, while still serving out a full sentence for violent, sometimes deadly offenses. In a case where a criminal was serving consecutive sentences for both a serious and less serious crime, their total time in prison could be reduced under the sentence reduction plan.

Prozanski, a chief architect of the 2009 legislation, said lawmakers never intended those consequences, especially for “those people who are committing those more heinous crimes” to be given reduced-sentence hearings for second, lower offenses. Many of those hearings proved upsetting to crime victims and their advocates.

“We heard the concerns that were raised after the bill was passed and was being implemented,” Prozanski said. “We’ve heard, we’ve seen, it’s time to fix.”

The most notable element of the new legislation, Senate Bill 1007, is its suspension of the expanded earned time. So far, 3,520 inmates have been granted the additional sentence reductions and judges have denied it for 797 others.

But according to the Department of Corrections, 182 other inmates’ cases are pending approval. They will no longer will be eligible, unless they’ve been approved by the time SB 1007 becomes law. Those whose sentencing for new crimes occurs while the 2009 law is suspended also would lose out on eligibility for the added 10 percent off their sentences.

The bill on Tuesday was referred to the budget- writing Ways and Means panel, so lawmakers can deal with the effect the resulting longer prison terms will have on the budget. Prozanski said the savings from early releases so far have reached about $4 million. If the expanded earned time was in place for all of 2009-11, the savings were expected to total $6 million.

Prozanski said the bill dropping earned time from 30 percent to the previous 20-percent maximum is a “time out” to allow the secretary of state to carry out the bill’s required audit of how well the Department of Correction has followed its “earned time” standards for inmates who have followed rules and worked to better themselves, as well as to determine in Oregon and in states with similar programs whether such practices lead to lower rates of repeated crime, or recidivism.

Shannon Wight, a lobbyist with the sentencing-reform group Partnership for Safety & Justice, said she didn’t think the law needed to be suspended.

“Some incredibly vocal and maybe misleading concerns were raised about the (law),” she said. “To make sure the policy gets a fair shake, some legislators felt they needed to suspend the (law).”

Anti-crime and victims-rights groups have been among the most critical, running recent radio ads criticizing the expanded earned time and lobbying for a full repeal of the policy.

Former Lane County District Attorney Doug Harcleroad said he wasn’t satisfied by the changes approved in committee.

“The time out needs to be a permanent time out. It’s that simple,” said Harcleroad, now a lobbyist for the Oregon Anti-Crime Alliance.

Steve Doell, head of Oregon-based Crime Victims United, said suspending the expansion of earned time until 2011 allows lawmakers up for re-election to try to avoid some of the campaign punishment they’d otherwise suffer for having pushed through sentence-reduction policies last year.

“This is a temporary political move to get them through an election season,” he said.