Governor: More than 3000 prisoners mistakenly released early since 2002 in

Gov. Inslee, speaking at a news conference, described the issue as “maddening”.

The problem began after the state supreme court ruled in 2002 that good time credit should be awarded for time inmates spend in county jails before being transferred to state prisons. But the programming fix contained “an inaccurate sequencing” that over credited good time for these offenders. When asked if any of the prisoners who were released early committed additional crimes, Brown said, “We dont have the answer to that.”Inslee told corrections officials to stop releasing prisoners affected by the glitch until a hand calculation is done to ensure the offender is being released on the correct date.

According to Washington’s local NewsChannel 4, only about seven offenders have time left to serve and five of those people have already been brought back in.

An analysis showed that as many as 3,200 offenders were released early.

The governor’s office said roughly 3 percent of all Washington prisoner releases during that stretch of time were affected, and those who were affected got out a median of 49 days early.

The state reports that a broad software fix is expected to be operational by January 7, 2016. “I have a lot of questions about how this happened”. Officials have said that they will be required to fulfil their sentences, though they will also receive good beahvior credit for the days they’ve spent abiding by the law outside of prison.

As for the previously incarcerated prisoners, authorities will force them to return to prison to finish their sentence or complete it through a work release program. That system has been miscalculating sentences ever since and has been releasing prisoners about two months early. “When I learned of this, I ordered the Department of Corrections to correct this, to fix it fast and fix it right.”

According to information released by the governor’s office, the Department of Corrections was alerted by a victim’s family to the computation problem in December 2012. That number will likely increase, but not by much, officials say. Outliers range from just a few days to 600 days early.

“It’s very troubling”, said Republican state Senator Mike Padden, chair of the Senate Law and Justice Committee. Depending on the findings of that investigation, some Department of Corrections officials could be fired, he said.