East Arizona News

Lawmakers in Arizona are promoting a plan that would see the state’s stern sentencing requirements reduced in certain cases, allowing people convicted of lesser felony offenses to be eligible for release after having served only three-fifths of their original prison sentence.

After recently concluding its sixth and final meeting, the recommendation was made by the House Ad Hoc Committee on Earned Release Credits for Prisoners. The early release program would only apply to individuals convicted of class 4, 5 or 6 felonies after serving 60 percent of a sentence.

But getting the measure over the final finish line won’t be easy, as the Arizona Mirror reports some Republican committee members are hesitant about signing off on it.

“I would have to take a very good look at that,” Rep. Walter Blackman (R-Snowflake) told the Mirror. “Right now, just on the outside, I wouldn’t support a 60 percent release without the structure I was talking about.”

Earlier during the 2019 session, Blackman led a push for sentencing reform that included reducing the state’s current 85 percent requirement. Among the questions he said he now has are how large a population of inmates the recommendation would apply to and if it would apply to violent or dangerous criminals.

Blackman previously sponsored House Bill 2270, which would have reduced the sentencing requirement to 75 percent for violent offenses and 50 percent for all others. More recently, he indicated that he planned to scale the proposal back so that it wouldn’t apply to violent offenses and to 65 percent for others.