A few months ago, I taught a session on DWI sentencing to a group of judges. As part of that session, I reviewed the rules for determining the parole-eligibility of a defendant convicted of impaired driving under G.S. 20-138.1 and sentenced to an active term of imprisonment under G.S. 20-179. The upshot of those rules, which Jamie Markham described in detail in this post, replete with illustrative examples, is that a defendant sentenced to the maximum punishment for a Level One DWI—24 months imprisonment—becomes eligible for parole after serving 2.4 months imprisonment if he or she (1) receives a full award of good time credit, and (2) (i) has obtained a substance abuse assessment and has completed any recommended treatment or training program or (ii) is paroled into a residential program. After patiently listening to me explain the rules for calculating parole-eligibility, several judges asked about their practical application. Specifically, they wanted to know how frequently defendants sentenced to active terms of imprisonment were paroled and how soon that occurred after the defendant became parole eligible. In other words, were the defendants they sentenced to two-years’ imprisonment routinely released after serving fewer than three months? The short answer is no. According to this 2009-2010 report by the North Carolina Department of Correction, the 3,188 non-structured sentencing misdemeanants released from prison during that period served an average of 6.5 months and 48 percent of the sentence imposed “due to good time, gain time and parole eligibility rules.” (North Carolina Department of Correction, [...]
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