Sean McGivern thought he was going home in September, finally due for release from one of California’s prison fire camps after serving six years on convictions out of Santa Clara County for robbery with a firearm, false imprisonment and assault with a deadly weapon.

The 41-year-old inmate said he has spent the past three years at the Fenner Canyon Conservation Camp in Los Angeles County, and on Sept. 7, he received a “legal status summary” document from prison officials showing he had served 2,102 days — including his pretrial custody in jail — and had zero days remaining.

His wife, Kristine Lonero, bought a plane ticket to fly from the Bay Area to pick him up, but McGivern is still in custody.

“As I sit here today, I have zero days remaining to serve,” McGivern said. “I have for some time now.”

McGivern has joined other inmates with a mounting list of complaints about how the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation is calculating how much early-release credit they get for working as a firefighter. New rules were put in place in May, leading them to believe that climate change and wildfires have had another effect: keeping inmates around longer to fight more fires.

“My release date was supposed to be Sept. 20. But they absolutely will not talk to us. They will not talk to our families. How are you guys holding me when I have a zero days release date? I can’t believe they’re getting away with that,” McGivern said.

The CDCR said it’s not getting away with anything, that McGivern’s release date is set for November and that the confusion stems from changes to good conduct credits the department implemented May 1 that affect more than 76,000 state prison inmates.

In July, when firefighters first began complaining that their release dates suddenly were being extended, the CDCR said it was working to fix the issue.

“In implementing the system, we became aware of a programming modification issue that impacted some projected release dates, and have responded quickly to address the situation,” spokeswoman Vicky Waters wrote in an email to The Bee at the time. “We have updated the system and have confirmed it is now calculating release dates in accordance with the methodology that has been in effect since the passage of Proposition 57 in 2017.

“The dates of those impacted by this issue in the system are being recalculated immediately, and we are communicating with them and their loved ones. All impacted people will receive their individual updated information as soon as possible.”

But inmates said they believe they still are not being given the proper amount of credit and have not been able to get an explanation for why their release dates suddenly have been pushed back.

Another inmate in the same camp, Wyatt King, provided paperwork from June 17 that showed his release date changed from Jan. 8, 2022, to Feb. 4, 2024, “per direction from Case Records Admin recalculation due to revised calculation methodology effective 06-01-2021.”

A separate “legal status summary” dated Sept. 23 — three months later — showed he had 17 days remaining but a release date of Nov. 6, 2022. Last month, the CDCR inmate locator listed his projected release date as October 2022. On Tuesday, his estimated parole eligibility date was January 2023.

“CDCR is doing what it wants to do to inmates at camp,” King said.

Numerous inmates have complained to the Berkeley-based Prison Law Office and have asked for help, while several others have contacted The Sacramento Bee claiming that once the new credit rules took effect, some inmates saw their projected release dates extended by as much as a year.

Some of them believe California is trying to keep firefighter inmates incarcerated longer because of the dire danger the state has faced this year from wildfires.

As of May, the CDCR had about 1,600 inmates in fire camps, including 900 who go out to scenes as volunteer frontline firefighters working under the supervision of Cal Fire officials.

The CDCR said it pays inmate firefighters between $2.90 and $5.12 per day, with Cal Fire paying another $1 per hour while they are working a fire. Inmates in other jobs are paid between 8 cents and 37 cents an hour, the CDCR says.

The fire work can be difficult and dangerous, and some inmates have been killed.

Until last year, they had little hope of finding work after prison as a professional firefighter because of their criminal records and licensing requirements. Then Gov. Gavin Newsom signed AB 2147 in September 2020, which allows inmate firefighters to seek expedited expungement of their records.

McGivern said the inmates in the camps believe prison officials have targeted them in an effort to find a way to keep the camps full as fire season continues.

“Had they calculated this the way they were supposed to, all the fire camps would be empty,” he said.

The CDCR adamantly denies that, with Waters writing in an email over the summer that the claim was “categorically false.”

Inmate families: Lost with new rules

But inmates whose projected release dates changed said they have nowhere to turn for help.

Donnell Marin was one of them, according to his wife, Taniesha Moore.

Marin had an expected release date of July 23 until the new credit rules took effect, and his release date suddenly was projected to be April 2022, she said.

Moore appealed repeatedly to prison officials, who told Moore in June that the CDCR “is aware of the concerns received regarding people’s release dates and a team of experts is currently looking into the matter.”

But inmates said confusion around the system persists and that they cannot get answers about how their credits are being computed.

“I don’t know how they’re calculating it,” Moore said. “It’s so confusing.”

Moore said the latest she had heard was that her husband was set to win release on Nov. 7.

Instead, she got a call Sept. 29 telling her Marin was being released that day, she said.

“I don’t know who did that,” Moore said. “They’ve changed his time three or four times.

“I can’t explain it to you. I don’t know what happened. All of a sudden, I got a call saying come pick him up, ‘immediate release.’ What is going on?”

Effort to reduce inmate population

The confusion stems from changes the CDCR implemented on May 1 to reduce prison populations during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The credit changes were implemented under Proposition 57, a voter-approved measure passed in 2016 while then-Gov. Jerry Brown was under intense pressure from federal courts to reduce California’s staggeringly overcrowded prisons or face the prospect of judges ordering the release of inmates.

That measure and other steps taken during that period worked.

At one point, the prison system was at 202% of capacity, with officials housing inmates in gyms and other open areas and federal judges ultimately ordering California to get its overcrowding to 137.5% of capacity.

Over the years, the overcrowding problem continued to decrease, with the CDCR reporting last week that its inmate population was at 96,200, or 112.7% of capacity.

The COVID-19 pandemic increased the urgency to reduce prison populations, and the changes in good credit rules that were put into place May 1 were designed to speed up inmates’ access to parole board hearings and increase the rate at which they earn credits for good behavior.

Inmates convicted of violent crimes get one day of good conduct credit for every two days served, while previously they earned one day of credit for every four days served, the CDCR said. Non-violent second- and third-strikers who previously earned one day of credit for every three served now get one day of credit for every day served, the CDCR said.

Fire camp inmates convicted of non-violent crimes previously earned a two-for-one credit but now “will see a change in their release date as their information is updated into the new calculation system,” the CDCR said.

“Instead of projecting their release date based on fire camp assignment, their date will be calculated using their GCC earning rate of 50%,” the agency said. “With the ability to earn MSC for successfully programming for every 30 continuous days, their release date should result in being similar to the previous ‘two-for-one.’

“Incarcerated people convicted of violent crimes who are assigned to a fire camp to be part of a fire crew, and who were previously earning the ‘day for day’ credit, or 50% credit, will see a change in their release date as their information is updated into the new calculation system,” the CDCR said. “Instead of projecting their release date based on fire camp assignment, their date will be calculated using their GCC earning rate of 33.3%.

“With the ability to earn (minimum security credit) for successfully programming for every 30 continuous days and by receiving the credit change from 20% to 33.3%, their release date will result in a sooner release date.”

The CDCR said inmates complaining simply do not understand how the system is calculating credits.

“The changes to the credit structure in May included the creation of Minimum Security Credit,” Waters wrote in an email. “That credit is applied at the end of every 30 day period, not at the beginning.

“Incarcerated people WILL see their date move out even after the previous application of credits is restored. This is because we no longer project release dates based on the assumption that people will remain in a fire camp/house assignment. Instead, their date is projected based only on their underlying Good Conduct Credit earning.

“However, every 30 days that they remain in a fire camp/house assignment, they will also receive the 30-day Minimum Security Credit, which is awarded in addition to their underlying GCC.”

Waters added that the forms inmates are looking at that indicate “0 days remaining” are “a summary that does not get into the actual calculation of credits.”

She added that she had “flagged the ‘Time Remaining’ field for our staff to look into it.”

The apparent result since The Bee began asking about that line?

McGivern said staff members are now handing out paperwork with that line obscured with Wite-Out.

Lawsuit filed to stop new rules

The process of creating the new calculations has hardly gone smoothly, with most of the district attorneys in the state joining a lawsuit seeking to halt the use of the new rules.

That suit in Sacramento Superior Court, filed by 44 of the state’s DAs, says the rules would allow the early release of more than 76,000 inmates and imperil public safety by letting out dangerous inmates who would see sentences reduced by as much as 50%.

The lawsuit challenges the CDCR’s use of emergency regulations to put the good credit changes into effect, and DAs have noted that the department did not allow public comment on the plan by victims’ families, instead revealing the plan on a Friday afternoon the day before the changes took effect.

In September, the CDCR hit back, with Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office filing a document claiming the district attorneys “lack standing to bring this case.”

“First, they lack statutory authority to bring this form of civil action,” the AG’s office wrote. “Second, they are not ‘interested parties,’ because they have no personal stake in this action.”

The filing claims the new regulations “do not impact them in any meaningful way.”

El Dorado County District Attorney Vern Pierson, president of the California DAs Association, disagreed, saying such a stance is arrogant.

“Consider who they represent,” Pierson said. “Consider who pays their paycheck and who they represent.”

The DAs already have addressed the standing argument, filing an amended lawsuit including victims groups as plaintiffs.

While the case is pending, however, the good conduct regulations remain in effect, and inmates’ relatives say they simply cannot understand when to expect their loved ones’ release.

“It’s very frustrating,” said Kristine Lonero, McGivern’s wife. “I’ve had to do research myself to try to understand why someone with zero days remaining would still be in custody.

“It’s just like chasing my own tail, trying to get facts and actual answers.”

This story was originally published November 3, 2021 at 5:00 AM.