Christopher Botelho and Dandridge Catus work in the library at the John J. Moran Medium Security Facility at the ACI under the watchful eye of Ernie Chartier, educational officer.

The Providence Journal / Frieda Squires

CRANSTON — A new state law that made it easier for well-behaved state prison inmates to reduce their sentences helped spur the first population drop at the Adult Correctional Institutions in four years, corrections officials say.

The Department of Corrections prison population report for 2008-’09 showed the average population at the prison was 3,773, a drop of 87 prisoners from the previous year. The decrease bucked a long-term trend at the prison, where the population has increased by 32 percent since 1992.

“This year, I can say with conviction that the changes in the way we award earned time and increases in the amount of program-participation credit inmates can earn has resulted in the desired drop in our population,” said corrections Director A.T. Wall.

According to the Corrections Department’s analysis, 81 percent of the 4,278 people who completed their prison terms during fiscal 2009 had their sentences reduced by the new earned-time law and with time off for taking classes.

Before the law was changed in 2008, earned time was tied to the number of years an inmate was serving. Someone in the ACI for 10 years could get 10 days lopped off his or her sentence for every month of good behavior. A prisoner in for nine years could get nine days off per good-behavior month. But someone doing two years could only hope to knock two days off for every month of good behavior.

In 2008, John Patrick Shanley, then a state representative who sponsored the legislation, said the state’s 50-year-old policy was out of whack because it benefited the small number of long-term prisoners the most, when the vast majority were serving shorter sentences.

“We had never changed it,” Shanley said, “though other states had made giant changes.”

The new method allows most inmates serving more than a month to earn up to 10 days off their sentence for each month of good behavior, plus 5 more for joining a treatment program. Excluded from the incentive are sex offenders and those serving life sentences.

In fiscal 2009, which ended June 30, the change reduced sentences practically across the board, with only prisoners serving 10 years or more not seeing a greater reduction in their length of stay. The biggest effect was among prisoners sentenced to three to six months, where the average stay was down 15 percent. For those serving six to nine months, the average length of stay went down 10 percent, as it did for those sentenced to five to seven years.

The cost of incarcerating a prisoner varies depending on which of the ACI’s eight prisons an inmate is held in. The least expensive is the $32,909 per inmate cost at the John J. Moran Facility, a medium-security unit. The most expensive is the high-security section, which costs $157,033 per inmate per year. The cost at the two women’s facilities is $72,582 per prisoner annually.

“It has alleviated the strain on our operational system caused by overcrowding, saved taxpayer money and makes good overall correctional sense,” Wall said of the earned-time changes in his introduction to the 2009 report. “As I write this, our inmate census is in the 3,500s, after hitting an all-time high of 4,000 just two years ago.”

Rhode Island is one of six states that have a so-called unified prison system, one that houses convicts sentenced to prison and suspects being held while awaiting trial. Overall, 16,001 people were sent to the ACI in fiscal 2009, either to serve a sentence or await a court appearance. That was the fewest commitments since 1997.

The report said 4,114 of them were sentenced prisoners. The average stay for a convicted inmate was 18.1 months, and half were in for a year or less. The awaiting-trial population ranged roughly from 700 to 800 a month in fiscal 2009, and turned over even faster, with half leaving the Intake Service Center within four days.

Rhode Island has a relatively low incarceration rate; it locks up 1 of every 187 residents, ranking it 46th among the 50 states and District of Columbia, according to a recent study by the Pew Center on the States.

States with higher incarnation rates and tighter budgets have been forced to release prisoners for budget savings, Shanley said. Rhode Island was able to develop its new policy without fiscal pressure demanding a specific quota of releases be achieved, he said.Prisoner profile

179 serving life sentences,

35 with no chance of parole

Most common misdemeanor for those awaiting trial:

Women: loitering with indecent intent, 50 percent

Men: driving with a suspended license, 13.8 percent

Most common felony

for sentenced inmates:

Women: manufacturing/delivery of a controlled substance, 10.7 percent

Men: robbery, 11.1 percent

29 percent of men and 23 percent of women were imprisoned as probation or parole violators

55 percent of male prisoners and 46 percent of female prisoners will be back in prison within three years

jhill@projo.com