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Washington Inmates Have Been Incorrectly Released Early Since 2002
Gov. Jay Inslee announced that he is taking immediate actions after the discovery of a long-standing sentencing issue that resulted in inmates within the state being released from prison early.
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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.
The state Department of Corrections expects to have a software fix in place by January 7 to correct the error that led to the early releases, Inslee’s office said.
Inslee hired retired federal prosecutors Robert Westinghouse and Carl Blackstone to conduct an independent review into how the error occurred and why it took more than a decade to uncover. This is apparently due to “good time” credit where duration in prison is reduced in exchange for participating in rehab programs, for example.
Since 2002, the Washington state Department of Corrections has given more than 3,000 prisoners early release. Depending on how much time they have left to serve, the offenders will go to work release or back to prison. Apparently three percent of all releases made since then were given too much credit for their good beahvior.
The state says the problem originated in July 2002 when the Washington Supreme Court ruled the Department of Corrections had to apply “good time” credit earned in county jails to state prison sentences.
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.
Brown says most cases were 100 days or less, and the prisoner who potentially could have been released 600 days early was still incarcerated. Five have already been returned to incarceration.
‘These were serious errors with serious implications.
“I’ve apologized to the governor personally on behalf of the Department of Corrections for this 13-year error”, Pacholke said.
The DOC estimates that the median number of days prisoners were released early is 49.
According to information released by the governor’s office, the Department of Corrections was alerted by a victim’s family to the computation problem in December 2012.
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“For reasons we still don’t yet fully understand, that fix never happened”, Brown said. A service request to fix the problem was filed, but the coding error still went uncorrected.