Unconstitutional prison overcrowding, taxpayers sick of paying the high price of incarceration, and the trend toward a more libertarian view of narcotics, have resulted in recent changes to the California Codes that allow prisoners to petition for reduced sentences. Prisoners successful in getting their sentences reduced frequently have custody credits that exceed their reduced sentences. Understandably, prisoners wish to use these "excess credits" to reduce the time they must spend on parole or community supervision following their releases.
Mr. Rangel is an "excess credit" prisoner. Rangel was sentenced under the old "two strikes and a felony" law to life in prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. After the penal code was changed in 2014, Rangel returned to court and had his sentence reduced from life to nine years. However at the time he received his reduced sentence of nine years, Rangel had already been in prison for 18 years, meaning he had nine years in "excess credits". The trial judge credited these excess credits against the mandatory post-release community supervision period of three years, resulting in Rangel being released without any community supervision.
The state petitioned the appellate court for a writ directing the trial judge to go back and order Rangel to complete a three year community supervision period. A Fourth District panel denies the state's petition.
The issue is one of equal protection; to wit, is there a rational reason to treat those subject to community supervision differently from parolees as regarding excess custody credits.
The California Penal Code specifically allows prisoners to use excess credits to reduce the amount of time they must spend on parole. However, the code is silent as to community supervision, the post-release program created in 2011 for the purpose of reducing the prison population. Prior to 2011, every felon released from prison was required to be on parole. In its effort to reduce the prison population, the state amended the law in 2011 to restrict parole to only the most dangerous offenders. Those prisoners released from prison for less dangerous offenses were now placed upon "community supervision", a kind of "parole-light" whereby they would be supervised by county probation officers instead of parole officers. While a parole violation can result in a return to prison, a community supervision violation cannot (the maximum sanction being 180 days in local custody).
In this panel's view, there was really only one motivation behind substituting community supervision for parole for those prisoners deemed less dangerous and that is reducing the prison population (a view I share). As the terms of community supervision largely mirror those of parole, there is no evidence of an legislative intent to accomplish anything else with this change. Since the sole motivation was financial, there is no reason to believe the legislature meant to deny prisoners subject to community supervision the benefit of applying their excess credits against their periods of community supervision.
Plus, the panel points out that, from a public safety vantage point, it would make no sense to allow parolees to use excess credits to reduce their parole term and not allow the same for those on community supervision. The only reasonable disparate treatment would be to not allow the reduction for parolees, since they are the dangerous ones. If you are going to let the most dangerous prisoners credit their excess time against a post-release supervision period, what reason could there be to deny the same to those prisoners you deem low-risk?
The net effect is that, because Mr. Rangel served nine years more than his eventual sentence, he need not complete three years of community supervision. And that seems fair.
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