NEWSBYMICHAEL HAMDEN

The Federal Bureau of Prisons interprets the clear language of a federal statute in a way that causes thousands of prisoners to serve more time than authorized by law. But a new Supreme Court case could change that.

Federal law requires the Bureau of Prisons to award good conduct credit to prisoners -- that is, time awarded to reduce sentences for prisoners who have complied with prison rules. The statute says that the BOP must reduce a sentence of "up to 54 days at the end of each year of the prisoner's term of imprisonment."

Yet it's been the Bureau's policy to calculate the credit for time actually served, instead of calculating the time based on the sentence imposed by the court.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments on the issue in Barber v. Thomas, a case that could affect some 195,000 prisoners (a decision is expected this summer). Prisoners, their lawyers and scholars have made the case that the statute's meaning is clear. Credit is to be awarded to prisoners who obey the rules "at the end of each year." Thus, for every 311 days of incarceration, a well-behaved prisoner should be credited with 54 days off the length of the sentence. In other words, a prisoner who served a 10-year sentence and behaved well could have his sentence reduced by a total of 540 days (54 days times 10 years).

But the BOP hasn't used this standard. Instead, it's chosen to use a different method that shortchanges prisoners. Under the Bureau's complex formulation, the prisoner would be held 70 days longer than authorized by law.

People who have served time for a criminal offense have certain obligations to society once they are released. Responsible citizens find jobs, provide for their families, pay taxes and involve themselves in the governance of their communities and country -- right?

But practically all states strip convicts of the right to vote after conviction, and many fail to restore the right once an offender has served time. Indeed, more than 4 million ex-offenders are disenfranchised in this country, the majority of whom are black. The result? Minority communities are under-represented in many municipal, state and national elections.

It's a founding principle of our democracy that people should have a voice in determining who their representatives are, and in shaping the laws by which we are governed. We violate this principle when we deny people the right to vote.

Why do we have such laws? An editorial in the New York Times this week notes that the original intent behind felon disenfranchisement was to subjugate freed slaves after the Civil War. In fact, President Andrew Johnson's amnesty proclamation of May 29, 1865 also disenfranchised former members of the Confederate Army, as well as those who owned valuable real estate. President Johnson's purpose seems to have been to disempower the antebellum aristocracy. But when federal troops were withdrawn from the South around 1877, Reconstruction ended. White rule was re-instituted and blacks -- though no longer slaves -- were again deprived of many civil liberties and civil rights, including the right to vote.

Yeah, I'm angry. I'm all riled up because our misguided criminal justice policies destroy individuals, families and entire communities. I'm steamed because at a time of financial crisis worse than any downturn since the Great Depression, government throws away billions of dollars (more than $39 billion, by most estimates) on policies that have proven to be abject failures. And I'm furious that people continue to call for ever harsher sentences, penalties and the further stigmatization of offenders in the face of overwhelming evidence that current practices are counter-productive and unsustainable.

It's especially frustrating, because we know that there are more positive, effective means of holding criminals accountable that are far more successful and far less costly.

The insatiable desire for vengeance is itself mad! The statistics are stark, and by now familiar. The U.S. incarcerates more people than any other country in the world, whether you consider it in terms of a percentage of the population or in absolute numbers. Yes, more than South Africa during the years of apartheid. More than the Soviet Union before its dissolution. More than China. And more even than the brutal regime of North Korea. Shameful!

Roughly 2.4 million people are locked up in this country, many for nonviolent offenses. Some reports conclude that as many as 50% of federal prisoners are serving time for drug-related offenses. (In some future article, I'm sure I'll get around to discussing the draconian drug laws that infringe personal liberty in this "land of the free," but at the moment there are bigger fish to fry.)

It's crazy! It costs an average of about $24,000 a year to lock somebody up. But years of experience, social science research and common sense all point to work, education and the strengthening of family and community ties as the best way to bring criminal offenders back into the fold. And after all, given that 95% of prisoners eventually return to our communities, shouldn't that be our objective?

Prisoners are people just like us: sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers of people we all know. And in case you don't think you could possibly find yourself among them, staring out from a small, foul-smelling cell through cold steel bars, think again. There are more than 4,000 federal criminal laws, and vastly more federal regulations that can lead to criminal penalties. Additional laws and regulations at the state level mean that virtually everyone violates the law every day.