OLYMPIA, Wash.—More than 3,000 prisoners in Washington have been mistakenly released early since 2002 because of an error by the state’s Department of Corrections that resulted in wrongly calculated sentences for about 3 percent of the prison population.
At a news conference announcing the error Tuesday, Dec. 22, Gov. Jay Inslee said he has ordered immediate steps to correct the longstanding computer glitch.
“Frankly, it is maddening,” Inslee said.
Authorities say a July 2002 state Supreme Court ruling required the Corrections Department 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.
An analysis showed that as many as 3,200 offenders were released early.
Inslee’s general counsel, Nicholas Brown, said the shortest early release time was a couple of days, while the longest was about 600 days. Most cases were 100 days or less, he said.
Based on a prior Supreme Court ruling, most of the affected offenders won’t have to go back to prison. Officials so far have identified seven prisoners who need to serve additional time because of the mistake. Of that number, five have already been re-incarcerated.
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.
