When you’ve been convicted of a crime and sentenced to prison, you battle with a swarm of emotions when you realize that you’re losing your liberty. Your primary goal is to complete your sentence. You want to regain your freedom, return home to your loved ones, and begin the fresh start you need in your life.
Every day you wake up in prison is another day you’re missing out on living life on your own terms.
If you’re serving time in a Texas state prison, you may be able to earn early release from prison with good behavior. The Texas law that defines good behavior, called “good conduct time,” can be challenging to understand. But having a reasonable grasp of how you can accrue good behavior time and how early you may be eligible to be released can help you keep your eye on the ball. By maintaining good behavior, you could increase your good conduct time, thereby, reducing your prison term.
How Much Time Can My Prison Term Be Reduced By for Good Behavior?
This is one of the more complex aspects of the good conduct time law.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a system by which prison inmates are assigned to different categories. Depending on which category an inmate is assigned, they’re able to earn a certain number of days of good conduct time. Inmates can earn good conduct time, which is limited to a certain amount of time per 30 calendar days of the inmate’s prison term. An inmate can earn the following amounts of good conduct time based on their classification:
- Line Class 3 classification – ineligible to earn good conduct time
- Line Class 2 classification – inmate can earn a maximum of ten days of good conduct time per 30 calendar days served
- Line Class 1 classification – inmate can earn a maximum of 20 days of good conduct time per 30 calendar days served
- Trusty classification – inmate can earn a maximum of 30 days of good conduct time per 30 calendar days served. The inmate can be awarded a maximum of ten additional days of good conduct time per 30 calendar days served
Inmates are typically classified soon after they are processed into the prison system and begin their sentences. Classifications aren’t permanent. Your behavior and other circumstances during your prison term may warrant reclassification.
While you may be able to estimate how much good conduct time you may be able to earn during your prison term based on your intended conduct and participation in the aforementioned programs, it’s hard to predict what may happen during your prison term. As such, it’s easier to consider the maximum number of days you could potentially earn in good conduct time than trying to determine how much earlier you may be able to be released from prison.
What Can Earn You Good Conduct Time
No inmate is entitled to receive good behavior credit or good conduct time. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice may award an inmate good conduct time based on their classifications or if they are participants in several productive activities. These include:
- A drug or alcohol treatment program
- Vocational program
- Educational program
- Agriculture program
- Industrial program
- Work program
- Literacy program
To earn good conduct time, you have to be eligible for parole or mandatory supervision at some point.
Can I Lose Good Conduct Time?
If you commit a crime while imprisoned or violate prison rules, you can permanently lose some or all of your accrued good conduct time or may have some or all of your accrued good conduct time suspended.
If your parole or mandatory supervision has been revoked, you forfeit any good conduct time that you’ve accrued. You may be able to have your previously accrued good conduct time restored after three months of good conduct while in prison, as long as your parole or mandatory supervision wasn’t revoked due to a new criminal conviction.
If you make indirect or direct contact with the victim or the family of the victim of the offense you’re currently serving time for without their express consent, and the victim is under 17 years old, you forfeit some or all of your accrued good conduct time. The forfeiture can’t be restored.
If you’ve filed a lawsuit that was dismissed because it was deemed frivolous or malicious, you forfeit some or all of your accrued good conduct time, which can’t be restored.
Suspended good conduct time could eventually be restored, but that determination will be made based on your conduct during the time of the suspension.
Contact Us Today
If you have questions about earning good conduct time, call the Dallas expunction and record-clearing lawyers of the Law Offices of Mark T. Lassiter today at (214) 845-7007 or contact us online.
