Should Vermont allow its inmates to earn time off from their prison sentences? A committee created by the Legislature says yes -- just not right away.

Vermont eliminated its earned good time program for inmates in 2005, but now corrections officials and some advocates say it's time to implement a new program -- one that has clear milestones for inmates.

"Rehabilitation is an important goal and that ought to be encouraged," said Seth Lipschutz, who oversees the Prisoner's Rights Office in Vermont. He says the previous decision to end the earned good time policy had real consequences -- including longer sentences and overcrowded prisons. "When all that got taken away the judge didn't say, 'Oh, I was going to give you a 15-year sentence but now I know you can't earn any good time so now I'm only gonna give you a 10-year sentence."

Lipschutz says a get-tough-on-crime sentiment prevailed then. Now, officials are focused on rehabilitation and re-entry into society. That includes Mike Touchette, who will become corrections commissioner next month.

"In looking around and researching what's happening around the country, almost every state has some form of a good time process. Most of those have a milestone-based opportunity for people to earn good time," Touchette said.

Touchette supports a new good time policy with clear policies and milestones for inmates to achieve, and he says the state should take another year to develop the program properly. "There was a lot of subjectivity to it and that really created some disparities in how it was being applied and the uniformity of that."

Some victims' advocates, like Karen Tronsgard-Scott of the Vermont Network, think it's a good idea, too. She says it could be a very good approach for many low risk offenders and help inmates struggling with addition.

But Cara Cookson of the Vermont Center for Crime Victim Services says more study is needed. She says victims "tend to express frustration when the actual time served by the person who harmed them does not reflect the sentence issued by the court."

Lipschutz says a policy could help the state with a problem created in part by nixing the old policy -- too many prisoners. "The main negative ramification was that it increased the prison population significantly," he said.