At least three Washington
state prisoners released early because of a computer error committed
crimes during the time they should have been behind bars, state
officials said Thursday.
During a conference call with reporters, officials from the Department
of Corrections said the three are among 27 others who have been released
since June and potentially need to be arrested and returned to prison
because of an error the agency made on calculating sentences.
Officials could not say whether those prisoners have yet been
re-arrested. They also didn't release specific information on the new
crimes, saying they were working to confirm the information.
Earlier this week, Gov. Jay Inslee said that he ordered immediate steps
to correct software-coding error that has led to as many as 3,200
offenders being wrongly released early since 2002.
Five prisoners released in error since June have already been
re-incarcerated. Another 3,000 who are still incarcerated also had
inaccurate release dates. Officials have said most of the errors were
100 days or less. In some cases, inmates were released just a few days
early, but at least one person who is still incarcerated had a release
date that was off by about 600 days.
"We're casting a wide net and doing extensive reviews of each case," Corrections Secretary Dan Pacholke said Thursday.
Pacholke said that once they have all of the information they need, they
will prioritize expediting the arrests of those who committed new
crimes. He noted that on average, about 10.5 percent of inmates who are
released from prison commit a crime within the first year of their
release.
"This group will probably be comparable to that overall statistic," he said.
The mistake came following a July 2002 state Supreme Court
ruling that required the Department of Corrections to apply
good-behavior credits earned in county jail to state prison sentences.
However, the programming fix ended up giving prisoners with sentencing
enhancements too much so-called good time credit.
Sentencing enhancements include additional time given for certain
crimes, like those using firearms or those committed near schools. Under
state law, prisoners who get extra time for sentencing enhancements
cannot have that time reduced for good behavior.
Based on another Supreme Court ruling that credits time out to the
sentence of prisoners who have been mistakenly released early, most of
the affected offenders won't have to go 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 did its own calculations and found he was being credited with
too much time.
However, even though the agency consulted with attorneys regarding the
error the same month and scheduled a fix for the program, it was
repeatedly delayed and ultimately, never done. Pacholke said he didn't
learn of the error until last week, and the governor says he didn't
learn of the issue until that same time, when corrections' officials
notified his staff.
Inslee has 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. A broad fix to the
software problem is expected to be in place by early January.
Two retired federal prosecutors have been brought in to conduct an
independent investigation to determine why the error occurred and went
unfixed for more than 13 years.
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