Jail Credit During a Pending Post-Release Supervision Violation

There are about 10,000 people on post-release supervision (PRS) in North Carolina. Some of them get charged with a new crime. That new charge usually prompts the issuance of a PRS warrant. And when a person is arrested on one of those, it is generally understood that there is no entitlement to bail. So, even if the new charge is relatively minor, the post-release supervisee will often be held in jail until the new charge is resolved. A question that comes up again and again is whether the defendant is entitled to jail credit against the new conviction for the time spent detained on the pending PRS violation. The old rule was no. As discussed in this prior post from 2015, DAC used to take the position that a person detained on a pending PRS violation was “serving a sentence imposed for another offense” within the meaning of G.S. 15-196.1, and therefore not entitled to credit toward any other sentence. If a court awarded jail credit on a new charge and DAC was aware that the person was also being held on a pending PRS violation at that time, they would write back to the court, flagging it as an error. The idea was that detention on a pending PRS violation was a “conditional revocation” under the language of G.S. 15A-1368.6(a), and thus counted as service of the sentence, barring credit toward anything else. DAC no longer applies that interpretation. If a court awards jail credit to a new charge for [...]