More than 2 million people are currently incarcerated in the United States. Nearly every state now has some form of time credit program, often called “earned time,” that allows people to reduce their sentences through participating in education, work, or good behavior. Since 2020, 27 states have expanded these laws.
But a new study examining time credit policies in 11 jurisdictions, including the federal Bureau of Prisons, found that outdated technology and fragmented recordkeeping systems routinely prevent incarcerated people from accessing credits they’ve legally earned — sometimes keeping people locked up longer than they were supposed to be.
At least 370 lawsuits have been filed in the past decade — 70 against state agencies and over 300 in federal court — alleging failures in tracking time credits. Incarcerated individuals won about one-third of the state cases.
The findings arrive at a critical moment: states have expanded credit-earning opportunities faster than they’ve modernized the systems needed to run them. The result, the report shows, is a growing gap between what the law promises and what people inside actually receive.
“What we found is that implementation — not intent — is the barrier,” Jessica Hicklin, founder and co-executive director of educational technology nonprofit Unlocked Labs, told Open Campus. “Outdated data systems, inconsistent credit calculations, and fragmented program tracking have turned a promising evidence-based reform into a patchwork of inequity and missed opportunity.”
The findings draw from 34 interviews with correctional professionals and formerly incarcerated individuals conducted in 2025. Unlocked Labs conducted the study in partnership with Arizona State University with support from Arnold Ventures.
The earned-versus-awarded gap
An Illinois educator described a case in which the state denied all earned time credits to a man who completed 12 college credits and passed all his courses. He had originally signed up for 14 credits but withdrew from a 2-credit course with college approval.
State officials rejected his application for a sentence reduction because he hadn’t revised his contract to reflect the dropped course, the educator told researchers.
“They were like nope, you know, our paperwork said you had 14 credits, and you didn’t, and you have to pass them all, and you didn’t pass them all. You only passed 12, so no good time for you.”
The consequences aren’t abstract. Illinois offers 180 days off a sentence for bachelor’s degrees. California allows up to two-thirds sentence reduction for nonviolent crimes and 180 days for each degree. Colorado provides up to 60 days per program completed.
These credits can substantially shorten sentences, but an Illinois educator told researchers there’s often confusion about whether completing a program will actually result in time off.
“We don’t really know when we submit a certain number of days how that will translate to actual credit awarded,” the educator said. “That’s the big distinction — what’s earned versus what’s awarded.”
Paper records and personal archives
Most prison systems use separate databases to track program completion and sentence calculations — and the two don’t talk to each other.
“Programming components are never intertwined with time computation,” an Arizona official told researchers. “They’re always designed as standalone, parallel processes.”
The study’s findings reinforce earlier reporting by WBEZ and Open Campus, which found that Illinois officials knew about recordkeeping problems before a new sentence credit law went into effect in January 2024. Records from before 2010 still exist on paper, and the state estimated it could take until 2029 to digitize everything needed to calculate credits accurately.
In that void, incarcerated people often build their own backup systems.
A Missouri man brought certificates from the early 2000s and late 1990s to his parole hearing. Program tracking was informal — he’d bring certificates to case managers who entered them into software. “But it happened three times — they switched systems and didn’t migrate the data. So I ended up just keeping all my hard copies.”
Others described keeping duplicate copies: One for staff, one at home, one for themselves. “I know that it happened to people — their whole file ended up getting missing,” a New York participant said.
The information barrier
For those trying to track their own credits, the system offers little transparency. Participants described the sheets used to calculate sentence reductions as “as confusing as they can make it.”
Many also told the researchers they had limited access to information about the laws meant to help them. “There’s no mandatory or automatic clause in the policies or the law,” one participant said. “So basically, if you don’t know to ask, you don’t get it. And if you do ask, and they don’t like you, you still don’t get it.”
Those who couldn’t read or interpret the forms often had to rely on others,sometimes paying for help. “If you couldn’t read or didn’t have the aptitude, you had to get some money to pay somebody,” a Missouri participant said.
Others described an informal system of shared knowledge — what one person called “institutional wisdom.” But that only works if you have access to those networks.
A formerly incarcerated person who had spent time in the federal system said that even asking for help came with risks. “If the counselor did not like them, or if they were too assertive, that class mistakenly wasn’t noted in their profile,” the participant said. “So you really had to be careful with how you asked for things.”
Implementation delays
And when laws do change, the systems responsible for applying them often struggle to keep up.
A Missouri participant described watching someone lose a decade of progress: “I saw a guy get 10 years added to his sentence because the secretary decided it was calculated wrong at the last prison he was at. He was preparing for a parole hearing 30 days away and they canceled it.”
In Colorado, when a new law passed, one person said they waited two months for their time credits because staff didn’t know the law existed. “The people in charge of taking time off your sentence didn’t even know that this was a law,” they said.
In Illinois, another participant said credit expansions required intervention from the legislature and governor. “We ended up getting out a month late after the bill passed.”
The technology exists
In many systems, the technology to solve these problems already exists but is underutlized. Tablets have been distributed across facilities but are rarely used for tracking credits or providing access to records.
“You were supposed to eventually be able to contact the counselor, go to the law library, submit commissary slips — everything through the tablet,” an Illinois participant said. “But in Illinois, they just never activated that part of the tablet, so everything was still done by paper.”
A Colorado participant put it simply: “They have the technology. It’s just a matter of implementing what it is and leveraging the tool for what it can do.”
Participants called for integrated digital systems, automated credit calculations, full use of tablets for transparency, and clearer policies.
The report concludes that “reforming the laws is not enough. Effective time credit policies require the operational tools and digital infrastructure to ensure accountability, consistency, and fairness.”
Hicklin, the Unlocked founder, said the fixes are within reach. “This is fundamentally an infrastructure problem, and infrastructure problems have solutions,” she said. “States can build transparent, automated, and reliable systems that ensure earned progress leads to earned release.”