More than 3000 Washington state prisoners mistakenly freed early

So much so that Washington Governor Jay Inslee had to order corrections officials to halt some prison releases due to the error in the software. “Early estimates indicate that the median number of days offenders were released from prison is 49 days before their correct release date”, the release reads.

A broader software fix is expected to be in place by early January.

Inslee says he has hired retired federal prosecutors Robert Westinghouse and Carl Blackstone to conduct an independent review to determine how the error was left uncorrected for 13 years.

The problem was first discovered in 2012, but a fix was reportedly delayed numerous times, leading the state’s new chief information officer to alert DOC officials to the severity of the problem.

It was introduced in 2002 as part of an update that followed a court ruling about applying good behaviour credits. But the programming fix gave the prisoners too much extra time.

They’re running the numbers now: Officials found that prisoners were released an average of 55 days early, though one inmate in particular was released 600 days ahead of time. Most of the offenders who were released early will be given credit for their time in the community, or sent to work release or back to prison. When the DoC’s computer systems were amended to take that into consideration, however, there was an inaccurate calculation of how long a good time credit was.

“These were serious errors with serious implications”.

Dan Pacholke, who began as Department of Corrections secretary October 17, said he learned of the problem last week. “I have a lot of questions as to how this happened, and I know the public is having questions”.

Most of the inmates that were released will not be called back to finish their sentence, however, there are a few that will. In fact, five such prisoners have already been re-incarcerated. Unfortunately, the program was not coded correctly and was issuing more credit than it should have, which in turn was allowing some to be released early. The governor’s office says the computation error resulted in a “narrow subset of offenders” being given excessive time off their sentences for good behavior.

Pacholke said he welcomed the external investigation.

As to whether inmates released might have committed new crimes? & stated he has ordered immediate steps to correct the longstanding pc glitch.