More than 3000 Washington prisoners mistakenly freed early

Washington Governor Jay Inslee has ordered corrections officials to halt some prison releases after announcing today around 3,200 prisoners were released early due to a programming error, according to a report from NBC affiliate King-5 News.

The glitch stems from a 2002 state Supreme Court ruling requiring prisons to apply good-behavior credits to sentences, ABC reported.

That the problem has continued unfixed for 13 years, Inslee said, is “deeply disappointing, totally unacceptable, and, frankly, it is maddening”.

The latest developments on the mistaken early release of prisoners in Washington state because of an error by the Department of Corrections (all times local).

Inslee said the technical problem is expected to be fixed by January 7.

“I have a lot of questions about how and why this happened, and I understand that members of the public will have those same questions”.

Inslee and his staff say the error only affected prisoners whose sentences included “enhancements”, meaning their sentences were increased by the involvement of firearms, being near a school, or other similar factors.

“These were serious errors with serious implications”.

Inslee is bringing in two former federal prosecutors, Robert Westinghouse and Carl Blackstone, to investigate the glitch, why it lasted for 13 years and and why it was not corrected. Depending on how much time they have left to serve, the offenders will go to work release or back to prison.

The Department of Corrections was first alerted to the error in December 2012, when a victim’s family learned of a prisoner’s imminent release. The family questioned why the inmate was being released so early, did their own calculation of his possible release date that showed it was too soon, and contacted the department. Early estimates indicate the median early release time for inmates as 49 days from the proper release date. Officials so far have identified seven prisoners who need to serve additional time because of the mistake.

But, added Brown, state does not have a complete list of names of those released early. “When I learned of this, I ordered the Department of Corrections to correct this, to fix it fast and fix it right.”

State officials don’t know yet if any former prisoners committed crimes during a time when they should still have been incarcerated. Nick Brown, Inslee’s general counsel, said he was confident a software fix for sentencing calculations will be implemented next month.

Brown says most cases were 100 days or less, and the prisoner who potentially could have been released 600 days early was still incarcerated.

But not every inmate will be returned because the Supreme Court has previously ruled that an inmate released early gets to count the days outside the walls against his sentence if he obeys all rules and doesn’t commit any new crimes.