Prosecutors want to halt new good-time release credits for 76,000 California inmates

One week after California prison officials increased the amount of good-conduct credits that thousands of inmates could earn toward release, 41 district attorneys throughout the state have signed onto a petition asking the state to repeal the new rules.

Sacramento District Attorney Anne Marie Schubert and 40 other DAs sent a letter Thursday afternoon to California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation Secretary Kathleen Allison objecting to the temporary emergency rules that went into effect last Friday.

The rules “have the effect of significantly shortening the length of sentence for 76,000 violent and serious offenders” and were adopted on an emergency basis despite the fact that the change was based on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s budget summary from May 2020, the prosecutors wrote.

“The regulations were passed under a claim of an emergency and first made public on Friday, April 30, 2021, at 3:00 p.m,” Schubert’s office said in a statement issued Thursday. “These regulations would result in the early release of some of California’s most violent criminals.”

Corrections spokeswoman Dana Simas said the department is “reviewing the petition at this time to determine next steps.”

“Proposition 57, which voters overwhelmingly approved in 2016, gave CDCR the authority to submit regulations to provide additional opportunities for incarcerated people to receive Good Conduct Credits, as allowed by statute,” she wrote in an email. “The emergency regulations are a result of that voter mandate.

“CDCR submitted these emergency regulations in accordance with Office of Administrative Law policies, and are still subject to public comment and approval before becoming final.”

“Earning additional credits can move up parole consideration of people convicted of nonviolent crimes who have served the full-term of the sentence for their primary offense, and who demonstrate that their release to the community would not pose an unreasonable risk of violence to the community,” the department’s website says.

Under the changes, inmates convicted of violent crimes earn one day of good conduct credit for every two days served, while previously they earned one day of credit for every four days, CDCR says. Non-violent second- and third-strikers who previously earned one day of credit for every three served now get one day of credit for every day served, CDCR says.

The policy allows for inmates to reach parole board hearing sooner than they might have in the past, but prosecutors have been warning since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic more than a year ago that they worried emergency rules adopted to reduce crowing in prisons will lead to inmates being released who should still be in prison.

The letter from the prosecutors comes one day after The Sacramento Bee revealed that a man sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018 for the death of a California Highway Patrol officer in a 2017 high-speed pursuit served less than 3½ years of his sentence, a revelation that outraged law enforcement officials.

Alberto Morales Quiroz was released from prison last summer with no notice to prosecutors or the family of motorcycle Officer Lucas Chellew, 31, who was killed when he crashed into a pole while pursuing Quiroz.

Prosecutors discover Quiroz, 29, had been released after he was arrested last week on new felony charges of possessing a 9 mm Glock “ghost” gun and making threats.

Corrections officials say Quiroz earned one day of credit for every two served and also received 676 days of credit for the time he spent in jail before his sentencing, as well as adjustments made because of COVID-19 that led to him being released three weeks ahead of schedule.

Chellew’s family learned Quiroz had been released — and rearrested — after former Sacramento Sheriff John McGinness, a Chellew family friend, saw a story on the case in The Bee on Wednesday and called Chellew’s father.

Quiroz was released before the new good-conduct credit rules took effect, but McGinness said the policy of increasing good-time credits for inmates without first ensuring rehabilitation inside prisons is a disaster.

“A model inmate is not a model citizen,” McGinness said Thursday. “People told when to get up, when to eat, when to work out, their life is pretty controlled.

“This is a wholesale release of people who have demonstrated beyond a doubt their threat to the well-being, peace and quality of life to the community.”