Sacramento Judge Blocks New Law Expanding Credit For Time Served Program For County Jail

Confusion reigns at the Sacramento County Jail after a Sacramento Superior Court judge blocked implementation of a new state law increasing the amount of time credit inmates at the county jail can get for good behavior.

Judge Loren McMaster issued the injunction on Wednesday in response to a lawsuit brought by the Sacramento County sheriff's deputies union, which claims that the California Community Corrections Performance Incentives Act of 2009 applies only to state prisons and not county jails.

The new law, enacted by the legislature and the governor to deal with overcrowding of California's prisons and jails, was meant merely to modify and expand a previous state law that allowed prisoners, both in the state prison system and county jails, to have their sentences reduced if they met certain good behavior criteria. Under the old law, prisoners were eligible for fifty percent credit, meaning a one day sentence reduction for every two days served. That meant someone sentenced to 60 days could be released after 40 days. The new law increased the opportunity for time credits to one day reduced sentence for each day served, giving a person with a 60-day sentence the chance to get out in 30 days.

The absurdity of this situation comes in many forms:

• The Sacramento Sheriff's Department, along with sheriff's departments in 20 other California counties, has taken the official position of implementing the law. As a result now you have the Sheriff's Department saying it intends to enforce the new law while the sheriff's deputies union fights to block it.
• After Judge McMaster issued the injunction on Wednesday, the Sheriff's Department declared that there would be NO GOOD TIME CREDIT GIVEN AT ALL until the matter is resolved, even though such credit had been granted for 34 years under previous law. So now you have people in custody who would have been granted one-for-two credit for good behavior under the old law, were expecting to get one-for-one credit under the new law, and now find that they get no credit at all.
• Complicating things even more, McMaster on Thursday issued a clarification that said that good time credit would continue to be awarded, but only for the portions of sentences served before January 25, the date the new law took effect.
• And finally, some Sacramento judges are apparently giving out sentences with calculations for credit for time served based on the old law.

The state legislature is apparently working to pass a law that would clarify who should receive credits, but given the shambles that is our legislature (what's happened to Abel Maldonado's nomination for lieutenant governor is a good example) we shouldn't expect quick action. The result is that this has taken away the incentives for good behavior for people serving time in county jail, and exacerbated an already serious problem of jail overcrowding.