Cite as: 519 U. S. 433 (1997)
Opinion of the Court
creation of the original sentencing scheme; they referred instead to the question whether, in changing that sentencing scheme, the legislature intended to lengthen the inmate's sentence. To the extent that any purpose might be relevant in this case, it would only be the purpose behind the legislature's 1992 enactment of the offense-based exclusion. Here, unlike in Morales, there is no evidence that the legislature's change in the sentencing scheme was merely to save time or money. Rather, it is quite obvious that the retrospective change was intended to prevent the early release of prisoners convicted of murder-related offenses who had accumulated overcrowding credits.15
Respondents also argue that the retroactive cancellation of overcrowding credits is permissible because overcrowding gain-time—unlike the incentive gain-time at issue in Weaver which is used to encourage good prison behavior and prisoner rehabilitation—"b[ears] no relationship to the original penalty assigned the crime or the actual penalty calculated under the sentencing guidelines." Brief for Respondent Mathis 20. To the extent that respondents' argument rests on the notion that overcrowding gain-time is not "in some technical sense part of the sentence," Weaver, 450 U. S., at 32, this argument is foreclosed by our precedents. As we recognized in Weaver, retroactive alteration of parole or early release provisions, like the retroactive application of provisions that govern initial sentencing, implicates the Ex Post Facto Clause because such credits are "one determinant of petitioner's prison term . . . and . . . [the petitioner's] effective sentence is altered once this determinant is changed." Ibid. We explained in Weaver that the removal of such provisions can constitute an increase in punishment, because a "prisoner's eligibility for reduced imprisonment is a signifi-15 Indeed, the attorney general issued the 1992 opinion interpreting the statute to apply retroactively in response to concerns about the release of a notorious sex offender and murderer. See Fla. Op. Atty. Gen. 92-96, at 283, reprinted in Lodging, at 53.
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