re: LA DOC wastes millions ever year keeping inmates past their release date

The legislature is really to blame for this. Sentencing is a total disaster so that the legislature can make people believe they've set these hefty sentences...all while also dictating an absurd amount of "good time" which every prisoner gets by default.

Get rid of good time and just make the sentencing ranges be the actual sentence a person will serve. If you want people to only serve a max of 3.5 on a burglary, set the sentencing range at 0-3.5 instead of 0-10 with a mandatory 65% good time.

Local jails can't calculate good time or release an individual sentenced to DOC - it has to be done by DOC. This includes people who have been in for a year pretrial and plead to 1 year in court that day - the Sheriff doesn't have authority to issue that release because the sentence is in the custody of DOC.

If you want to keep the current structure, they need to appropriate funds for a system wide program that all local agencies can input sentences into and it can immediately be processed and a release issued the same day if necessary.