TI

Well this is nice news. Last week XXLMag talked with T.I.’s lawyer Steve Sadow, who confirmed that they were working on getting T.I. transferred out of federal prison and over to a halfway house for the rest of his sentence (which ends in March 2010). And today, low and behold, Atlantic Records told BET Newsperson Sharon Carpenter that T.I. has been released and is on his way to a halfway house in Atlanta right now.

UPDATE: XXLMag spoke to Sadow again…

“He was released this morning from his place of incarceration in Arkansas,” Sadow said. “As I understand it, he’s on his way back to the Atlanta area. He has to report to a halfway house in Atlanta sometime this evening. And he will then spend somewhere between the next two or three months in a halfway house, ending his Bureau of Prison sentence.“

According to Sadow, T.I. will have a lot more freedom under his new living conditions. “A halfway house is more along the lines of a residential dormitory,” he explained of the rap star’s new stipulations. “You live within this house that is broken into areas for living, and you are permitted to leave during the day for certain reasons of which would be employment, medical reasons, things of that nature, and you return to the halfway house in the evening. So it’s a restriction on your liberty but it’s a way for you to reenter into society and not be confined within a jail type institution 24-hours a day.”

(more after the jump…)


Here’s a NYT description of how federal/state halfway houses operate:

“The city, state and Federal programs work similarly. Inmates are screened by parole officers and officials of the programs. They are supposed either to have jobs awaiting them or to stand a reasonable assurance of finding employment. The severity or nature of their crimes may exclude them from consideration. They arrive from prison anywhere from a year to a month before they are eligible for parole.

They work outside the houses but reside within, under varying security. With good behavior, they are released at the time they would have left prison.”

There may be curfews and a travel limitation within 50 miles, but family is able to visit, and the future parolee is able to leave the house to work.

I’m guessing that along with celebrating the holidays with his wifey Tiny and their kids, he will also be able to make trips to the studio and get back to the business of making music.