David, J.
Richard Shepard’s direct placement in a community corrections facility was revoked for his failure to abide by the program’s terms. Consequently, he was ordered to serve the remainder of his eleven-year sentence in the Department of Correction. In calculating Shepard’s earned good time credit, the trial court determined Shepard was not entitled to any good time credit for his time served in the work-release program because the community corrections director had deprived Shepard of more good time credit days than he was entitled to receive.
Shepard now challenges the deprivation of good time credit, arguing that the community corrections director lacked the authority to deprive him of good time credit earned. We agree. …
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Whether Shepard was correctly deprived of earned good time credit hinges on the extent to which the program director was empowered to make such deprivation. On this critical issue, we seek guidance from Indiana Code section 35-38-2.6-6, which controls credit time for direct placements in a community corrections program.
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It is undisputed that Shepard violated the terms of his placement. At the hearing on the State’s petition to revoke placement in the work release program, the trial court heard testimony, including Shepard’s own admission, sufficient to support a finding that Shepard committed each of the alleged violations. Shepard also stops short of challenging the constitutionality of the hearing he received when deprived of his earned credit time. … Instead, Shepard argues that the program director lacked authority to reprimand offenders for program term violations by taking away their earned credit time.
We agree with Shepard’s reading of the pertinent statutes. Our legislature has outlined several actions a program director is authorized to take in instances when offenders violate a term of their placement in the program. Indiana Code section 35-38-2.6-5 gives a program director the power to (1) change the terms of the offender’s placement; (2) continue the placement unchanged; (3) reassign the offender to a different program; or (4) request that the trial court revoke the offender’s placement. The program director here was authorized to exercise any of the aforementioned options in disciplining Shepard for his failure to abide by the program’s terms, but instead chose to deprive Shepard of earned good time credit. We find no statutory or regulatory provision authorizing such deprivation by a program director.
In fact, our legislature has provided for the deprivation of good time credit for offenders directly placed in community corrections, but that statute does not expressly give the community corrections director such authority. Ind. Code § 35-38-2.6-6(d). Rather, the statute provides that “a person who is placed in a community corrections program under this chapter may be deprived of earned good time credit as provided under rules adopted by the department of correction under IC 4-22-2.” Ind. Code § 35-38-2.6-6(d) (emphasis added). We read this provision as giving the D.O.C. discretion to promulgate rules related to the deprivation of earned credit time, including the delegation of such authority to other entities. However, in the absence of such delegation, only the D.O.C. is empowered to deprive an offender directly placed into a community corrections program of earned credit time.
To be clear, we find no reason to believe that the D.O.C. cannot in the future promulgate a rule under Indiana Code section 35-38-2.6-6(d), authorizing the director of a community corrections program to deprive offenders of earned good time credit. But for reasons not known to us, the D.O.C. has yet to delegate such authority. Accordingly, the program director here was without authority to deprive Shepard of earned credit time, notwithstanding Shepard’s violations.
… Accordingly, we find the community corrections director lacked authority to deprive Shepard of any earned good time credit. Thus, we reverse the trial court’s good time credit determination and order the trial court on remand to re-calculate Shepard’s earned credit time to include the 190 days he earned while serving in the work-release program.
Rush, C.J., and Massa, Slaughter, and Goff, JJ., concur.