Time to Take the Plea
The Indiana Gov. just signed House Bill 1271 (PDF). For those of you (most, I assume) not following that particular measure, it takes criminal offenders in a certain category and effectively raises their sentences.
How? Currently, in Indiana, a prisoner gets “2 for 1″ credit time, meaning - if they mind their manners, they will only serve 1/2 their stated sentence: Two days credit for 1 day served. This upsets people all the time, but in the system, we have already adjusted our heads to it, so we know going into a case how much time is actually at stake. What the 2 for 1 gives us is great incentive to get prisoners to stay out of trouble in the joint - if they get in trouble, they can loose their credit time.
The Department of Correction keeps track of where people are on their credit status by assigning them classes: Credit class I is 2 for 1, credit class II gets 1 day credit for 2 days served, etc, all the way up to class IV, in which you have to serve 6 days to get 1 day credit.
What the new law does is say that certain child molesters (kids under 12 or injury/death results) and certain murderers (again, victim of sex crimes or witnesses to sex crimes) can only get credit class IV. If you or someone you care about is facing one of these cases, they might want to hurry up: the new law goes into effect for convictions after June 30, 2008.
