Terminally ill prisoners; conditional release, sentence credits.

Release of prisoners. Provides that any person serving a sentence imposed upon a conviction for a felony offense other than those enumerated in the bill as exceptions to eligibility and who is terminally ill as defined in the bill is eligible for consideration by the Parole Board for conditional release. The bill also establishes a four-level classification system for the awarding and calculation of earned sentence credits. The bill specifies certain crimes that are subject to the maximum 4.5 earned sentence credits for each 30 days served that is permitted under current law. The bill provides that the Department of Corrections shall convene in due course a work group to study the impact of the sentence credit amendments set forth in the bill. The bill directs the work group to report to the Governor and the General Assembly by July 1, 2021, the membership of the work group and the work group's plan for conducting such study, including any data and information upon which the work group will rely in conducting such study, and to report its finding and conclusions to the Governor and the General Assembly by December 1, 2022. The remainder of the bill has a delayed effective date of January 1, 2022, and requires the calculation of earned sentence credits to apply retroactively to the entire sentence of any inmate who is confined in a state correctional facility and participating in the earned sentence credit system on January 1, 2022.