Advanced (Un)Supervised Release

In this earlier post I wrote about Advanced Supervised Release (ASR), a new program created by the Justice Reinvestment Act (JRA) that allows certain defendants to be released from prison before serving their minimum sentence. The law is set out in G.S. 15A-1340.18. To sum it up, defendants who fall in certain grid cells who receive an active sentence may, in the discretion of the sentencing judge and the prosecutor, be admitted to the ASR program, through which they can secure an early release from prison by completing certain “risk reduction incentives.” Defendants who complete those incentives in a timely fashion get released onto post-release supervision on their ASR date; defendants who don’t serve a “regular” sentence, as dictated by the minimum and maximum sentence imposed by the court. When I wrote about the law last September, I noted that only time would tell how it would be integrated into practice. Well, time has passed, and some issues have emerged. First, it’s worth noting that people are using ASR. A common refrain in many of my JRA training sessions was that prosecutors—over whose objection an ASR date may not be set—would always object. That has not happened. Second, I’m told that many of the ASR dates that have been set have been calculated incorrectly. In cases where the sentence imposed is from the presumptive or aggravated range, there really isn’t any calculation to be done. The ASR date in those cases is just the lowest mitigated minimum sentence the defendant could [...]