35-d-1 How to Earn Good-time Credit

• Library: A Jailhouse Lawyer's Manual (2020 Edition)

35-D-1. How to Earn Good-Time Credit

You can earn good-time credit for "good behavior and efficient and willing performance of duties" assigned to you in prison, or for "progress and achievement in an assigned treatment program."¹⁸ On the other hand, you can lose good-time credits for "bad behavior, violation of institutional rules or failure to perform properly" any duties or programs assigned to you in prison.¹⁹ If you fail to complete a "recommended" program, prison officials may also withhold good-time credits.²⁰

You do not have a right to good-time credits.²¹ In other words, prison officials are not required to give you good-time credits. But if prison officials think your behavior in prison is acceptable, they will probably grant you good-time credits.

You can earn good-time credit only while you are in prison and not while you are on parole, conditional release, or supervised release. In most jurisdictions, prisons do not have to-and will not-accept credits that you earned in a different state prison or a federal prison.²²

Depending on the type of sentence you are serving, you can use good-time credit to shorten your sentence, earn unconditional early release, or, in the case of determinate and indeterminate sentences, earn conditional release.

(a) Good-Time Credit in Definite Sentences

If you are serving a definite sentence and earn good-time credit, prison officials will use the credit to shorten your sentence and decide if and when you are eligible for unconditional early release. The process where prison officials decide whether to grant you good-time credit depends on the type of facility in which you are imprisoned. If you are serving your definite sentence in a county or regional jail, the sheriff, warden, or other person in charge of the facility will decide whether to give you good-time credit.²³ If you are serving your definite sentence in a state prison, the prison's Time Allowance Committee ("TAC") will recommend to the superintendent the amount of good-time credit it thinks you should receive.²⁴ Every prison in New York is required to have a TAC consisting of at least eight prison employees.²⁵ The prison superintendent will review the TAC's recommendation and may add comments to it. He will then forward the recommendation to the Commissioner of Correctional Services, who...