Thousands of Washington prisoners mistakenly released early

Preliminary reports assert that as many as 3,200 inmates were let go ahead of their scheduled release date since 2002, when the state Supreme Court ruled the DOC implement a system to give credit for “good time”.

That the problem has continued unfixed for 13 years, Inslee said, is “deeply disappointing, totally unacceptable, and, frankly, it is maddening”. However, the programming fix ended up giving prisoners with sentencing enhancements too much so-called good time credit.

“So far Department of Corrections has identified seven offenders that need to be brought back in, and we’ve brought in five”, she said Tuesday. However, many of those who were released early will not be locked up again because they earned credit for days they’ve been out of prison without running afoul of the law.

The average amount of time those inmates was released early is 49 days, although in one case an inmate was released 600 days early, and others only got out a few days before they should have.

Gov. Jay Inslee’s order is meant to enable officials to do hand calculations to make sure the person is being released on the right date.

A broader software fix is expected to be in place by early January. Inslee said he didn’t learn of the problem until last week. “I have a lot of questions about how this happened”. The department changed its coding to comply with the ruling, but over-credited good time for some offenders, according to Inslee.

A fix was repeatedly delayed “for reasons still being investigated”, according to a statement from the Governor’s office.

The computer calculating error affected about 3 percent of the inmates released since July 2002. Depending on how much time remains in their sentences they will either return to prison or go on work release.

Inslee’s general counsel, Nicholas Brown, said most of the errors were 100 days or less.

No state official has been fired, Brown said.

The governor has hired two retired federal prosecutors, Robert Westinghouse and Carl Blackstone, to conduct an independent review of how the error occurred and why it took 13 years to resolve.

DOC Secretary Dan Pacholke said he wasn’t told about the glitch until last Tuesday, and Inslee said he was briefed Thursday night.

“It’s very troubling”, said Republican state Senator Mike Padden, chair of the Senate Law and Justice Committee.

Padden says he wants to learn if any of the prisoners who were released too soon because of a computer glitch committed new crimes.

Lead paragraph corrected at 11:50 a.m.to state that the inmates were released early.