Can you explain the what max release date means?

This situation has some conflicting information that is worth untangling before getting too attached to any specific timeline.

The core confusion here is around what time served credit actually means in practice. Being put on probation in 2012 and then incarcerated in 2014 does not automatically create time served credit going back to 2012. Probation is a supervised release status, not incarceration, and time spent on probation does not typically count as time served toward a prison sentence the way actual jail or prison time does. If the court said time served, going back to August 2012, that language needs to be in the actual court order to be real and even then, the specifics of what exactly is being credited matter enormously.

The max release date of August 29, 2016 on a four-year sentence is the outer boundary, meaning the absolute latest he would be released assuming no good time or other reductions apply. Most state systems apply good time credits of roughly ten to fifteen percent automatically upon arrival, which on a four-year sentence, reduces the outer date by several months. A best-case scenario under standard good time puts release somewhere around early to mid 2016 rather than August.

The four to six-week claim is very aggressive and would require either a specific court order granting significant credit for time going back to 2012 or some other legal mechanism that is not visible from the information provided. That kind of dramatic reduction would be documented in the court paperwork rather than communicated verbally.

The most reliable way to get clarity is to obtain a copy of the actual sentencing order and the facility's official sentence computation. Those documents tell the real story regardless of what was said verbally before or during sentencing.