Thousands of Washington state inmates mistakenly released early -governor

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.

Meanwhile, Inslee says DOC is working swiftly to locate all offenders who were released earlier than they should have been to make sure they fulfill their sentences as required by law.

A software fix is expected in place by January 7.

“Frankly, it is maddening”, ABC News reported Inslee as saying. The family did its own calculations and found he was being credited with too much “good time” credits.

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.

This new ruling extended good credits only to the initial sentencing time, not the added time that some prisoners received for committing crimes with a weapon. 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. However, the coding fix was repeatedly delayed, and the governor says he didnt learn of the issue until last week, when corrections officials notified his staff.“For reasons we still dont yet fully understand, that fix never happened, ” Brown said.

Tuesday, a representative for the governor’s office said, “So far, Department of Corrections has identified seven offenders that need to be brought back in, and we’ve brought in five”. The 3,200 account for about 3 percent of all releases during the 13 years in question.

At a press conference today, Inslee said the glitch was a “serious error and had serious ramifications”. Early estimates indicate the median early release time for inmates as 49 days from the proper release date.

Gov. Jay Inslee announced Tuesday the Washington Department of Corrections has been making mistakes in calculating sentences for years, resulting in thousands of inmates leaving prison early. State officials said police are rounding up the prisoners released early because some may have to go back and finish their sentences.

The computer glitch was spotted in 2012, not by the Department of Corrections but by the family of a crime victim.

But Pacholke said certain individuals within the Department of Corrections already knew about the problem in 2012, and did not fix it then. Department of Corrections officials said most are not likely to be locked up if they stayed out of trouble.