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HABITUAL FELONY OFFENDERS IN FLORIDA'S PRISONS: A SIMULATION OF EARLY RELEASE ELIGIBILITY POLICY

NCJ Number
144348
Author(s)
W Bates
Date Published
1992
Length
15 pages
Annotation
This report describes a joint project conducted by the Florida Department of Corrections and the Florida Parole Commission to identify early prison release decisions that would result if statutorily ineligible habitual offenders were reviewed for control release consideration.
Abstract
The project acknowledged that Florida's correctional system is facing a gridlock crisis in the near future in which the early release process of control release will become ineffective and that prison beds are being consumed by longer-term inmates sentenced as habitual offenders. Florida has 6,133 offenders in prison who are excluded from control release consideration solely because of their habitual offender status. A random sample of 100 of these individuals was evaluated by the Control Release Authority (CRA) as if they were statutorily eligible for early release consideration. Results showed that 72 percent of habitual offenders would be placed into an early release (advanceable) pool by the CRA and that another 19 percent would be assigned to a nonadvanceable pool that could be converted to early release inmates when population control became difficult. A profile of habitual offenders identified as suitable for early release indicated that most were black (79.2 percent), most were drug offenders (58.3 percent), and only 1.4 percent were violent. It was determined that adopting a control release eligibility policy for habitual offenders would move 4,416 more inmates into the advanceable pool, enabling a reduction in the acceleration of prison release for all eligible inmates and extending the period of time before the CRA would no longer be able to effectively control the inmate population by about 1 year. An appendix contains the scoring sheet used in the study. 3 footnotes, 6 tables, 1 figure, and 2 charts