By Sharyn L. Decker
Lewis County Sirens news reporter
The Kitsap Sun published a story over the weekend saying lawmakers will likely consider giving prison inmates more time off their sentences for good behavior as the state’s budget situation worsens.
Read news reporter Josh Farley’s story here
Vicki, typically, when an offender is sentenced to jail or prison, the sentence is cut by from 1/4 to 1/3 for the “mandatory good time”. And you are correct is stating that offenders can lose that time through infractions.
What the state is talking about now is cutting sentences even further, which means that more and more violent offenders will be released onto the streets for you and I to fear. It’s all a vicious cycle… they refuse to cut their own salaries, and refuse to cut out the nonsense and “we have to fund the arts” baloney, but when it comes to public safety, they couldn’t care less.
Josh Farley’s story gives the mistaken idea that good time is “earned”. Good time is a percentage of the sentence received at sentencing by the offender. Good time is then lost by misbehavior, not earned by good behavior. Everyone starts out with the same percentage of good time. What they do with it is the result of their infraction history in prison.