How does ASR work for defendants with multiple sentences?

The ASR law itself does not address how an ASR sentence should be administered for a defendant subject to multiple judgments. For instance, a defendant convicted of two crimes might be ordered into the ASR program in one or both of the sentences. If the defendant is ordered into ASR in both sentences and they are run consecutively, the prison system will likely sum the ASR dates to determine the earliest possible point of release. For example, a defendant who receives two 8–19 month sentences with ASR dates of 6 months for each would have an aggregate ASR date of 12 months and would apparently be eligible for release onto PRS at that point if the defendant had completed the assigned risk reduction incentives.

Less clear is how the prison system will administer an ASR sentence run consecutively to a non-ASR sentence. In general, the single-sentence rule of G.S. 15A-1354 directs DAC to aggregate the minimum and maximum sentences of all the judgments in a consecutive string and then release the person when he or she has served the aggregate maximum, less earned time, and less a number of months equal to the PRS period that the person will serve. That approach will not work for an ASR sentence, however, because the release date is dictated by the inmate’s service of the ASR term instead of by reference to the maximum sentence. Waiting to release the defendant until he or she is, for example, 9 months from the aggregate maximum sentence would negate the effect of the ASR date.