Early-release law creates anxiety

Early-release law creates anxiety

Inmates complain about court logjam; advocates for victims are frustrated

By Alan Gustafson, Salem Statesman Journal

A new Oregon law, designed to prune prison spending by shaving extra time off sentences for nonviolent offenders, is causing angst for prisoners and massive headaches for county court managers.

Thousands of sentence-reduction cases are flooding into the courts, piling onto crowded dockets.

Acting on the new law, the state Department of Corrections has determined that 4,169 inmates in Oregon's 14,000-inmate prison system are eligible for enhanced "earned time" sentence reductions.

By last week, 2,492 of the 4,169 cases had been referred to county courts throughout the state for resentencing consideration. The remainder will be sent to the courts within a few months, officials said.

Amid a logjam of cases, some inmates fear that potential early prison departures will get stalled or derailed.

"The anticipation and drama level in the prison has created such a buzz that tempers are beginning to rise and anxiety is becoming commonplace," Brandon Lawrence, an inmate at the Santiam Correctional Institution in Salem, wrote in a letter to the Statesman Journal.

At issue is the 2009 Legislature's expansion of what is known as earned release time in Oregon prisons. Earned release time refers to the controversial practice of shortening prison sentences for offenders who demonstrate good behavior and participate in rehabilitation programs.

Legislators increased the maximum amount of time that nonviolent offenders can whittle off their sentences through good behavior from 20 percent to 30 percent. The idea was to save about $6 million in reduced lockup costs in the 2009-11 budget period and allocate the money to other needs in the state's general-fund budget.

Proponents of the new law say that expanded earned time serves as a powerful motivational tool that gives inmates added incentive to obey prison rules and take part in rehabilitation programs.
Critics contend that earned-time inflation erodes already-weak sentences for nonviolent offenders.

Eligible inmates notified

Starting Aug. 31, the agency began notifying eligible inmates. At the same time, DOC started sending batches of notification letters to county court administrators and district attorneys in most of Oregon's 36 counties. By law, resentencing consideration occurs in county courts that sentenced inmates to prison.

In Marion County and elsewhere, court managers, judges and clerical workers are scrambling to deal with the deluge. It's an unfunded mandate; the Legislature didn't provide the courts or the prison system with any money to process earned-time cases.

"It's stretching our resources, but the Legislature told us to do it, so we'll do it the best we can," said Diane Morse, Marion County courts manager.
The Marion County court system is starting to tackle 368 cases — and officials know that more will be coming.

"It's kind of a rolling thing," Morse said. "We get a batch of 30 letters, then we get a batch of 50 letters, then we get a batch of 10 letters. We don't quite understand the rhyme or reason for how DOC's identifying these (inmates). But we are getting them, and we are going through the process of analyzing each case."

For each case, district attorneys are required to notify the crime victim or victims, if there were any, of the potential reduction in the offender's sentence. Court hearings are required if victims or DAs object to a shortened sentence. In such cases, defense attorneys must be appointed to represent inmates.

So far, the Marion County district attorney's office has reviewed about 260 cases and filed objections in about 70, Morse said.

"We are developing a process for setting these for hearings," she said. "As you can imagine, it's a pretty big task."

Ultimately, judges decide whether to shorten inmates' sentences.
One judge is handling the bulk of the Marion County cases, assisted by two staff members, Morse said. The cases are being squeezed into their regular full-time duties.

"We've got a judge doing them at 8 in the morning or over the noon hour or later in the day to keep the other dockets going," Morse said.
As of last week, nine inmates had received reduced sentences through Marion County court action.

Other county courts are moving faster. Statewide, 314 inmates had been granted reduced sentences by last week, according to DOC statistics. Ninety-two of them had been released from prison because of shortened sentences.

Multnomah County's court system had approved the largest number of sentence reductions, 101, followed by Deschutes County, 37; Linn County, 34; Malheur County, 28; and Washington County, 17. Polk County's court system had granted six.

Law reignites debate

Shaving time off prison sentences draws criticism from crime-victim advocates and praise from groups advocating for sentencing reform.
"We oppose this," said Steve Doell, president of Crime Victims United, referring to the enhanced earned-time program passed by the Legislature. "We think that 20 percent good time is more than enough in order to elicit behavioral compliance and participation in programs."

Proponents of sentencing reform described increased earned time as a step in the right direction.

David Rogers, executive director of Partnership for Safety and Justice, a sentencing reform group, said he's optimistic that bumps in the court review process will be smoothed out.

"It's the first wave of people for whom I think it's the trickiest in terms of working out the front-end kinks in the system," he said.

For Lawrence, such optimism rings hollow. He's rankled because Marion County court action to reduce his sentence could have sprung him from prison by now. Instead, he remains locked up, anxiously waiting for a court review.

"There are other counties doing their part, and I have personally witnessed fellow inmates get letters back from their respective counties and be released within 72 hours," Lawrence wrote. "Is this some kind of political 'chess move,' as re-election is moving nearer? Or is Marion County's Circuit Court just power-tripping or unprepared to do what they are required to do by law?"

Jamie Boyd of Salem, Lawrence's sister, said she shares his frustration.
"It makes me upset because there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of these letters that have been sent out to inmates, and they called their families saying they're going to get released early," Boyd said. "What it did is, it gave them all these hopes and dreams that they were going to be getting released sooner than expected."

For inmates and family members, the early-release program is fraught with confusion and uncertainty, Boyd said.

"I called the judge's chambers, and the secretary told me, 'All I can tell you is we've got tons of these and we don't know what we're going to do with them,'" she said. "They're sitting on these (cases), and they're causing a ruckus in the prisons."

Jeanine Hohn, a Corrections Department spokeswoman, said the agency has taken a systematic approach in notifying eligible inmates.

"In other words, those inmates who are scheduled to release the soonest are receiving their notification letters first, followed by those who may be releasing later on down the road," she wrote in an e-mail to the newspaper.
"The process is moving along as quickly as it can, given the agency's limited human resources and the undetermined amount of time that it may take a given court to make a decision about a particular inmate."

Additional Facts

New law

House Bill 3508, approved by the 2009 Legislature and signed into law July 1, increased from 20 percent to 30 percent the maximum amount of time that nonviolent offenders can earn off their sentences for good behavior.

Prison officials have determined that 4,169 inmates are eligible for enhanced sentence reductions. Each case requires court review and approval.