Issue Summary.
Currently, all inmates convicted of a violent felony (roughly 50% of the incarcerated) are not eligible for any merit time, - that is, a reduction of sentence in recognition of rehabilitation evidence.
Merit time legislation is in need of both expansion of eligibility and features to improve effectiveness.
Coalition Position.
Merit time represents a concrete incentive to encourage prisoners to undertake long and difficult rehabilitation programs. Participation in meaningful programs ultimately increases public safety and could reduce unnecessary prison cost for inmates who have earned early release by demonstrated rehabilitation. The Coalition supports an expanded use of merit time to include a greater number of inmates, including qualified once-violent offenders, and a greater incentive for completion of specific rehabilitative accomplishments.
Modern risk assessment tools should be used to safely open merit time eligibility to qualified inmates who long ago were convicted as 'violent offenders'.
Prior to 1967 inmates were eligible to receive ten days per month off the minimum of an indeterminate sentence or off the amount of a definite sentence. The Coalition supports a return to this standard to provide a very meaningful incentive to eligible prisoners.
Incarcerated persons should have an incentive-based rehabilitation plan for a reentry-process that begins at the time of conviction, and sets the minimum requirements for consideration of early release. Merit time credits for satisfactory progress in the rehabilitation program should be amassed and vested in six month intervals to reinforce the incentive for progress.
Completion of this “rehabilitation contract” should not guarantee early release. It should, however, guarantee an earlier comprehensive review, and consideration for early release, by a parole board or other review body. Most inmates, including many once-violent offenders, will return to the community and most are capable of redemption; meaningful programming could prepare them for a crime-free life.
The early comprehensive review and consideration of release should carry with it
a rebutable presumption of release. If, however, early release is denied, the
earned merit time should be applied to the maximum sentence.
Rationale.
1. Merit Time promotes Rehabilitation.
Motivation for effective rehabilitation depends on strong personal incentives. Earlier release is a powerful incentive and should be offered to most inmates conditioned upon their completion of major rehabilitation programs and demonstration of evident rehabilitation.
Comprehensive rehabilitation programs have proven to reduce recidivism significantly. Depending on each prisoner’s circumstance, a serious restorative program of addiction treatment, cognitive development, education, and job training can be effective in making possible a law-abiding re-integration into society.
The social and economic cost to society for a prisoner who, after many years behind bars, gets out still addicted, uneducated, angry, sick, and disoriented is much greater than if attempts were made to create viable rehabilitative programs and activities with a genuine system of “merit time” rewards for adjustment and progress.
2. Merit Time Produces Large Savings.
With earned rehabilitation incentives, the prisoner, his family and society, all benefit. Reductions of 15-30% of many sentences translates directly into diverse cost savings. Prison costs are reduced by both shorter periods of current incarceration and less costs of recidivism. There are fewer future crimes and fewer future victims. More effective and less costly prison management, and control of prisoners with less pressure on correction officers, are corollary benefits of good rehabilitation programs and genuine earned rehabilitation incentives.
In NY State, we release about 20,000 prisoners back into society each year, of whom about half are labeled as “violent offenders.” If only one-third of these once “violent offenders” earned such merit time, and if that reduced each sentence by only one year, then at $32,000 per year, the savings from that alone would be about $105 million per year.
3. Merit Time Improves Justice.
Reduction of sentences for worthy inmates promotes justice in view of the excessive increases in sentences in the past several decades. Consider the truths published by nine expert criminologists in "Unlocking America," JFA Institute, Nov. 2007, concerning length of incarceration:
"For the same crimes, U.S. prisoners receive sentences twice as long as English prisoners, three times as long as Canadian prisoners, four times as long as Dutch prisoners, five times as long as Swedish prisoners and five to ten times as long as French prisoners. Yet these countries’ rates of violent crime are lower than ours, and their rates of property crime are comparable.
Three facts: a) many prisoners are now serving longer prison terms; b) the longer prison terms are not proportionate to the severity of the crime they were convicted of; and c) the extension of their length of incarceration has no major impact on their recidivism rate, or crime rates in general".
4. Merit Time and Released 'Violent Offenders'.
The same JFA document reports that: Of the total arrests in 1994-97, only 5% were of prisoners released in 1994-97, and only 1% were of released prisoners for violent crimes. Just 1.2 % of those who served time for homicide and were released in 1994 were re-arrested for a new homicide within three years of release; and just 2.5% of released rapists were arrested for another rape.
Modern risk assessment technologies can improve the probability that only those of less risk are granted early release under a merit time program. It clearly is unjust to withhold merit time and so penalize all those who long ago were convicted of a violent crime. Today, a much narrower exclusion can be prudently designed.
The NY Commission on Sentencing Reform states, in its October 15, 2007
report, "Merit time encourages inmates to engage in beneficial programming that
helps them prepare for successful re-entry into the community. An expanded merit
time program that allowed certain inmates who are serving a determinate sentence
for a violent felony to earn 1/7 (or even 1/6) off a sentence (perhaps capped at
six months or one year) would have much to commend it."
"At the heart of evidence-based practices is the adoption of a validated "risk and needs" assessment instrument which can assist sentencing judges -- as well as prison, probation and parole authorities -- to more accurately estimate the actual risk posed by an offender, identify personal deficits that have contributed to the offender's past criminality and target those deficits most likely to lead to further criminal behavior."
A Sept. 2007 DOCS report states that 82% of 14,681 first felony offenders, released during 2004, who had high prison program compliance, were still community successful after 24 months.
A summary of all 12 Coalition planks can be found at
Summary
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