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Software Error Releases Up To 3,200 Inmates Early (seattletimes.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Governor Jay Inslee announced Tuesday that software used by the Washington Department of Corrections has been making mistakes in calculating sentences since 2002, resulting in thousands of inmates leaving prison early. Corrections officials learned of a problem in 2012. A patch to fix the faulty software will be implemented next month. Here's how the bug happened: When people are convicted of a crime, they're given a base sentence. On top of that, there can be extra periods of time — for example, using a firearm might add five years on top of the base sentence. While in prison, inmates can earn time off their sentence for good behavior or participating in work/education programs — but it can only apply to their base sentence. The software involved applied the inmates' good behavior credits to each section of their sentence. The Corrections Department is now trying to track down released inmates to make some of them finish their terms.
Please read the article before posting:
"Many prisoners released early may not wind up being re-incarcerated, according to Brown. The law requires the state to give day-for-day credit in most cases to a prisoner who has been released early and hasn’t been found to break any laws since, he said."
This sounds like par for the course. They have something called "Compassionate Release" -- it sounds quite magnanimous but is actually incredibly petty: throwing seriously ill inmates out onto the pavement to reduce medical expenses.
Folks, most of these "early releases" were around 45 days early. Nothing to see. Move along.
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