Surprise Post-Release Supervision

I get a lot of mail from inmates. Lately, many of them have written to express their surprise upon being told by prison officials—for the first time—that they will have to complete a term of post-release supervision when they get out of prison. Sex offenders—especially Class F–I sex offenders, including those convicted of indecent liberties—are very surprised to learn that they will be on PRS for five years. Is it a problem that nobody mentioned PRS earlier? I can understand the inmates’ frustration. The judge was not required (statutorily, at least) to mention it when accepting a guilty plea, G.S. 15A-1022, and it's not obvious from the sentence itself. Sure, if you knew exactly how Structured Sentencing works, you might surmise that the maximum sentence had an extra nine, twelve, or 60 months baked in for PRS. But that’s pretty subtle. And for Class B1–E sex crimes committed between December 1, 1996 and December 1, 2011, and Class F–I sex crimes committed on or after December 1, 2011, the extra time included in the maximum sentence (9 months in each case) doesn’t match the length of the supervision period (60 months). You’d have to dig into G.S. 15A-1368.2(c) to figure that out. All of this raises the question of whether a failure to advise a defendant about PRS might call his or her guilty plea into question. In general, a defendant must be advised of the direct consequences of his or her plea, which are those that have a “definite, immediate and largely automatic [...]