Well, I'd put some of those responsible in the clinky - I hear they've got some freed up rooms :-)
Software bug sets free thousands of US prisoners too early
Washington State Department of Corrections is facing an investigation after it released more than 3,200 prisoners too early due to a software bug. "These were serious errors with serious implications," Governor Jay Inslee said in a statement. "When I learned of this I ordered [the Department of Corrections] to fix this, fix it …
COMMENTS
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 23:29 GMT elDog
Looks like there wasn't a good incident tracking system in place - and followup
I hate to say something so obvious. Actually I wanted to blame it on VB6 or Java or something.
But the error had been reported many years earlier and wasn't dealt with. Perhaps bug-tracking software wasn't available 10 years ago?
Or, in an effort to minimize costs, the administration hired the inmates to do the coding.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 06:36 GMT Roq D. Kasba
Re: Looks like there wasn't a good incident tracking system in place - and followup
You may be onto something with the Oracle, or at least whatever DBMS they use. Something in my waters says there's a poorly implemented join somewhere - easy to do, consequences can be subtle, born of tinkering with an existing system to make it more complex, easy to miss erroneous results in testing, and every junior developer thinks they're a database expert.
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Wednesday 23rd December 2015 23:57 GMT Archimedes_Circle
Perhaps because the number of days that someone is released early from prison, amongst people who were released early, is a Poisson process, which means that it is discrete, and could quite likely be non-symmetric. So they chose a value that better indicated the centre of the distribution and was less prone to outliers.
Why use any number?
They're all just somebody's lies.
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Monday 28th December 2015 20:24 GMT Gannon (J.) Dick
Many US Prisons have been Privatized, that is, run for profit by private corporations.
Corruption is virtually unknown, of course, but it will be a whole lot of fun seeing how the Prison Officials account for food uneaten by missing prisoners. I believe we will find that the "Mean" is used more often than strictly allowable by law.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 02:16 GMT Mark 85
Re: OOPS???
Also, I suspect the final report will not recommend anyone be sanctioned/charged/etc. for this blunder.
Probably not. But fingers will be pointed. Some poor long retired or dead programmer will be blamed and all will be well. The fact that IT was probably outsourced to save some money might be blamed but then whatever politician thought it was a great idea will take the heat. But nevertheless, there will be gnashing of teeth and displays of outrage since we're in election season.
As for the former prisoners, I wonder how many will be rounded up and returned to serve out their time? I expect that they will spend millions on doing this and many of the former inmates who have got out and hopefully led good lives will now face losing jobs, etc. because the state wants to serve justice and lock them back up for a month or two.
The only winners in this will be whatever politico makes the most of the publicity.
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Friday 8th January 2016 18:05 GMT Tom 13
Re: As for the former prisoners,
I'm a law and order type as far and hard on it as you can get before you fall into outright thuggery calling itself law and order.
On this count I'd have to say the prisoners have been discharged by the state and are free. It's not their fault the state didn't properly keep track of the time they served and they were released early.
As to the jackalope who delayed the patch... Yeah, he wouldn't want me for his judge. I'd probably make HIM serve all the time for all the prisoners he let out early.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 00:44 GMT Captain DaFt
Well, so much for reform
Get out of prison, turn your life around, get a career, a family, a home, put your previous life behind and be an upstanding citizen, and then find out you're going back to prison, for their mistake?
That would really mess up your day.
Seriously, If some of the released have kept out of trouble, why should they have to go back, aside from some bureaucracy's paper work being tidy?
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Thursday 24th December 2015 09:16 GMT SolidSquid
Re: Well, so much for reform
I was wondering the same here. If there's been releases within maybe a month then sure, I could see those people being brought back, but given they screwed up bad enough that it's been 3 *years* since the issue was found and it's not been fixed it seems like that should fall on them to just accept it. If it hadn't been so long ago then parole might have been a more reasonable response (basically converting the remaining time to parole time), but after 3 years I doubt even the parole time would still be running, especially if the median early release is a month and a half
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Thursday 24th December 2015 05:21 GMT John Tserkezis
Idiocracy pretty much nailed it.
Joe Bauers: Hi, excuse me, um, I'm actually supposed to be getting out of prison, today, sir.
Prison Guard: You're in the wrong line dumbass. Over there.
Joe Bauers: I'm sorry, I ain't mean to be a big dumbass, sorry.
Prison Guard: Ay, aw, let this dumbass through.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 06:18 GMT backdoor
surely its normal to check these things
I ain't no software guy, but surely in a prison in particular, any sort of software that controlled something as central as release dates would be double checked, at least on an annual basis, to be sure it was accurate and still working fine.
You would think they would audit it or check it maybe even on a monthly basis.
It seems very strange to me.
Would the sellers of the software be up for a lawsuit/s from the prison and maybe some families?
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Thursday 24th December 2015 22:20 GMT david 12
Re: surely its normal to check these things
" but surely in a prison in particular"
Prisons operate with almost no feedback. The only people watching what happens are the prisoners, and nobody cares about their opinion.
This mostly includes the release date. Prisoners get "time off for good behaviour" which is under the control of the prison admin, and can be revoked. And they get "parole", which is under the control of the parole board, and can be revoked, but in general they don't have a right to immediate release even if they are eligible for "parole", and it's all subject to administrative processes, and even the guards don't know who is going to be released, let alone the prisoners.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 08:12 GMT Suricou Raven
I've seen this on TV.
There was an old series, Bugs, which had a rather cool prison escape. The tech-genius villain made a deal with the prison operator: They give him external communication, he applies his great financial skill to run a share trading and business operation from within his cell. No-one need know the mysterious CEO is a prisoner. The scheme is a huge success, the warden gets rich, the villain gets richer... until he has enough wealth to simply buy the prison and order his own release. By the time the prisons authority figures out what happened he is long gone.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 09:34 GMT Chris G
Fix it right
A tautology. How is it possible to fix it wrong?
Talking of law suits, if they were trying to get me back inside because of their mistake, they would be speaking to my lawyer. Especially if I was refomed, I would be looking for damages for all kinds of things if I actually had to go back.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 17:46 GMT Fatman
A SERIOUS case of """What if"""
From the article:
<quote>The issue stemmed from a 2002 ruling by the state's supreme court that allowed prisoners to claim "good time" credits from when they had been held in jail before being sentenced to prison. </quote>
WHAT IF... you had a prisoner who was released early, let's say back in 2003, 2004, 2005, etc; who turned their life around, and now has to contend with The Long Arm of the Law arriving to snatch him from his (or her) current life situation and be expected to serve out some amount of time from so long ago, all in part due to the state screwing up.
At what point should "sleeping dogs be left alone"? If I were in that situation, and I were """snatched back""" to serve out some small amount of time, I would be looking to find the best plaintiff's lawyer I could get and sue the hell out of somebody. And, maybe make a "Federal case" out of it while I am at it. If I were Washington stae DOC officials, I would be very careful about how to proceed in dealing with long released prisoners, lest I be spending a lot of time in court rooms as a defendant.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 23:31 GMT gnasher729
Re: A SERIOUS case of """What if"""
"At what point should "sleeping dogs be left alone"? If I were in that situation, and I were """snatched back""" to serve out some small amount of time, I would be looking to find the best plaintiff's lawyer I could get and sue the hell out of somebody. "
I probably see this much too logical...
These prisoners could get up to 1/3rd off their sentence for good behaviour. That should logically be extended to the time they are out of jail. So if someone was released 100 days early, and spent 300 days outside jail without doing anything wrong, then that should take care of the 100 days early. Plus if someone can reasonably claim that going to jail would be an unusual hardship (fear of losing their job), then they should be able to do say 40 days remaining jail time over 20 weekends.
But I fear that would be too logical...
On the other hand, if someone has returned to jail anyway, then I would agree that the miscalculated time should be added back.
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Friday 25th December 2015 22:07 GMT Vic
Re: A SERIOUS case of """What if"""
So if someone was released 100 days early, and spent 300 days outside jail without doing anything wrong, then that should take care of the 100 days early.
It would be easier to consider the time since release as time on parole; if the subject has stayed on the right side of the law in that time, the sentence should be considered served.
Vic.
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Thursday 24th December 2015 20:20 GMT Paul Johnson 1
How to miss the whole point of reforming prisoners
Quote: "The authorities are now trying to find prisoners who were let out early and will send them back to the cooler to finish off their time inside."
So lets say you did your time and you are trying to go straight. Despite all the usual problems with being an ex-convict, over the past year you've managed to land a minimum-wage job, rent a room somewhere cheap, and start trying to put some kind of order in your life.
And then the prison department decides to haul you back in for another 40 or 50 days. Its totally meaningless as far as punishment is concerned, but by the time you get back out your job and room have evaporated, and you are back to square one again.
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Friday 25th December 2015 01:33 GMT Yet Another Anonymous coward
Re: How to miss the whole point of reforming prisoners
Except the prisons (and their shareholders) are paid for the number of prisoners.
So the ones who are being good will be easy and cheap to find and re-imprison.
Those who have re-offended and are in another prison can't be charged for and those who have moved away or are on the run will be too expensive to catch
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Saturday 26th December 2015 00:18 GMT Steve C#
Same old story in Washington State
I live in Washington State. The state and local governments have been run for many years by incompetent, very politically correct, bureaucrats that are constantly being sued for their screw-ups. Rarely is anyone fired/sacked and they are often promoted. This is especially true for WA State Child Protective Services, their total in lawsuits paid out was over $150M a year ago. This does not include active or unresolved lawsuits.
Another example, the WA State Legislature and Democrat Governor are currently trying to find a way to impeach the WA State Auditor, a Democrat. He was indicted for federal income tax evasion, lying to investigators, concealing millions of dollars, and making repeated false statements.
This issue was probably bad programming of the software and not the software itself. Yes, blame the software, not the incompetent personnel. The real crime here is that the Department of Corrections has know about this for years and has kept it hushed up. Why release the news just before Christmas? Well, it is between elections and a good time to bury the news...
Tacking on new prison time should be done only if the convict released early is once again in prison, either due to a new conviction or a probation violation. The goal should be reform of the individual and not punishment for punishment sake. But then, bureaucrats don't think that way.
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Friday 8th January 2016 18:24 GMT Tom 13
Re: The goal should be reform
I don't concur on that. While that should be part of the goal, there is also a goal in proper punishment itself.
That being said, it was the Dept or Ineptitude that screwed up. The state discharged them as sentence served. That shouldn't be revocable. We law and order not reform types can be real hard asses about that. You can't build your life if the rules keep changing randomly.
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Monday 28th December 2015 16:07 GMT Anonymous Coward
Old news
No, not "old news" as in already reported. "Old news" as in this has been known about for a long time.
I have a family member who was incarcerated in Washington State, and was released about 24 months ago. As an inmate in the penal system, he knew all about this 'early release bug'. Depending on which system was used, the inmate's 'Expected Release Date' would vary.
Most of the Department of Corrections knew about it too. They would use it to screw with prisoners - "You are going to be released on this date." Then a month later, once the prisoner's family was notified, plans made, schedules arranged, etc, they would revise the release date to be the correct one.
The WA DOC never hesitated to make victims of the family as well, creating bureaucratic problems to punish us for the offender's crime.
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Monday 28th December 2015 19:59 GMT Gannon (J.) Dick
The Taxman's Secret Santa
Wow.
Amazon and E-Bay just invented a "Just In Time" service delivery scheme that works for the Public Sector!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2015/12/23/amazon_and_ebay_accused_of_collaborating_with_overseas_sellers_to_defraud_taxman_of_millions_of_pounds/
Dear State of Washington, was that gift postmarked "Redmond" by any chance ? I think I know who your Secret Santa is.