PRISON-RELEASE DISCRETION AND PRISON POPULATION SIZE - STATE REPORT: LOUISIANA

ii PRISON-RELEASE DISCRETION AND PRISON POPULATION SIZE STATE REPORT: LOUISIANA Note on the project’s rankings of “degrees of indeterminacy” To compare the degrees of indeterminacy in individual prison sentences or across the prison-sentencing systems of different jurisdictions, we use a qualitative ranking framework based on our cumulative learning while preparing the project’s 52 jurisdiction-sp. [...] Application of the PMP measure to entire prison systems is, at best, an appr oximation that requires the proration of multiple classes of sentences and their PMPs according to the numbers and percentages of prisoners who have received those different classes of sentence. [...] General rules of prison release in Louisiana Actual time served under most Louisiana prison sentences is a function of the parole board’s release discretion and the accrual of good time credits administered by the department of corrections.15 Since the late 1990s, the timing of the vast majority of releases from Louisiana has been a function of good time reductions from prisoners’ maximum terms. [...] About 50 percent of state prisoners in Louisiana are held in parish prisons but are legally considered to be in the custody of the department of corrections; they are eligible for the same good time earnings rates as people held in state prisons (as discussed in text above). [...] 14 PRISON-RELEASE DISCRETION AND PRISON POPULATION SIZE STATE REPORT: LOUISIANA For the most serious class of sentences in Louisiana, with no parole release eligibility and no good time discounts, the judicial sentence fully determines actual- time-to-be-served (again, in the absence of rarely-bestowed forms of release discretion).