Here is a good read on Mr. Ozmint's idea to reduce Truth in Sentencing!!

[barky586]

It is 5:00 am and I just woke both my husband and daughter up to tell them about this! This hit the AP wire the 19th (yesterday):

http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/mld...l/15800216.htm

Ozmint disagrees with parole, sentencing proposals

MEG KINNARD

Associated Press

COLUMBIA, S.C. - South Carolina's prisons could become more difficult to manage if most inmates are required to serve 85 percent of their sentence, Corrections Department director Jon Ozmint told a Senate panel studying the state's criminal justice system Thursday.
Currently only convicted felons sentenced to 20 years or more must serve at least 85 percent of their sentence, but state Attorney General Henry McMaster has proposed that criminals sentenced for other crimes - like attempting a lewd act on a minor younger than 16 or vulnerable adult abuse - be held to that same sentencing standard.
Ozmint said that proposal doesn't give inmates any incentive to behave.
If split into two groups, Ozmint said, the group of inmates that could earn upward of 20 percent off its sentence would be better behaved than a group that could only earn up to 15 percent off.
"I don't find anything outrageous about our assertion - which is reality for us, in managing a prison," Ozmint said.
McMaster told the panel last month he wanted to require most offenders in South Carolina serve at least 85 percent of their sentences.
But in a letter to panel members, Ozmint proposed reducing the state's truth-in-sentencing requirements to 70 percent from 85 percent. If that happened, the state "would gain the additional advantages of slowing the growth rate in our prison population and creating more incentive for good behavior and rehabilitation," Ozmint wrote. "Our prison system and our state would be safer, because assaults and disciplinary problems would decrease and more inmates would participate in rehabilitation programs before release back into society."
A spokesman for McMaster says that is moving in the wrong direction. "The attorney general disagrees," said McMaster's spokesman Trey Walker. The manipulation of these percentages "has caused a crisis. ... No one believes sentences mean what they say anymore. And that's why we need accountability and transparency in the system."
But that's not the only issue the two disagree over.
Ozmint doesn't want to abolish parole, which McMaster has set as the primary goal of his second term. He is running unopposed for re-election in November.
"Eliminating parole will increase the rate of growth in prisons," Ozmint wrote. "In every state where parole has been eliminated, in whole or in part, this has been demonstrated."
That's not true, Walker said. In the decade before parole was abolished in Virginia in 1995, the prison population there grew 154 percent, Walker said, citing a report by the Virginia Criminal Sentencing Commission. But since 1995, the population has grown a total of just 31 percent.
In his letter to lawmakers, Ozmint said Virginia's prison population has increased to 46 percent.

[nikkisep]

Wow! This made my day, thanks for posting! I pray every night that something...anything...would be done about truth in sentencing. Even 70 percent would be awesome. I'll continue to pray that this will go into effect.

But quick question, perhaps you or someone else can answer this for me. In the article it states "Currently only convicted felons sentenced to 20 years or more must serve at least 85 percent of their sentence". My husband only got three years...why oh why does he fall into this category?!

[barky586]

nikki, that part is incorrect (the 20 years). It is a common error that the media tends to make for some reason. What the writer meant/should have said is that any person who commits a crime that COULD render a maximum sentence of 20 years or more falls under the 85% Truth in Sentencing Law (Felony DUI is an example) - it doesn't mean that the person actually received the 20 years.