Last December I told you about how the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) had accidentally released approximately 3,200 inmates from their prison system due to a “sentencing computation issue”. This “computation issue” occurred over a 13 year period.
It was disclosed a week later that one of those prisoners accidentally released early had been charged with killing his girlfriend in a car crash when he should have been behind bars.
Then another week later it was disclosed that another prisoner mistakenly released three months early had been charged with shooting and killing a teenager. The perp committed that crime less than two weeks after his early release.
So far, three government employees associated with this fiasco have resigned (wonder if their government benefits remain intact?). Despite these resignations, no one has offered up any claim to personal responsibility for the error.
A former state corrections official said to be the highest-ranking administrator to have known about the mistaken early release of prisoners has stepped down from her job in another state agency, according to the Seattle Times.
Denise Doty was an assistant secretary of the state DOC in 2012 when a long-running programming error was discovered that led to the early release of certain types of offenders. After the error’s discovery in December of that year, an intended fix was delayed 16 times, for reasons that have yet to be explained.
In 2014, Doty was loaned out from DOC to work with the state Office of Financial Management on a project, and joined that agency full-time as assistant director of data and technology there. Doty resigned from that job effective Tuesday of this week, according to OFM spokesman Ralph Thomas. In a two-sentence resignation letter, Doty didn’t give a reason for leaving.
Washington State Governor Jay Inslee
Neither Gov. Jay Inslee nor OFM Director David Schumacher asked for Doty’s resignation, Thomas said.
In a January legislative hearing, DOC Secretary Dan Pacholke — who resigned earlier this month — said Doty was the highest-ranking corrections official aware of the sentencing-miscalculation problem. In addition to Pacholke’s resignation, Ronda Larson of the state Attorney General’s Office stepped down from that agency last week.
Read the whole story here.
DCG