A number of system errors have allowed 450 criminals with “a high risk of violence” to walk free in California. And what’s worse is that the authorities aren’t doing much to address the problem. This sounds a bit like somewhere I know.

The prisoners were accidentally placed on “non-revocable parole”, which means that they don’t have to report to a parole officer. Non-revocable parole was created to ease the over-crowding of California prisons by granting parole to inmates who’ve committed low-risk offences.

Inmates don’t qualify if they’re gang members, have committed sex crimes, violent felonies or pose a high risk of re-offending. But according to the inspection that reviewed the system errors:

The computer program prison officials used to make that assessment does not access an inmate’s disciplinary history. The program also relies on a state Department of Justice system that records arrests but is missing conviction information for nearly half of the state’s 16.4 million arrest records.

So without the history they’re ignoring their own protocols and letting prisoners walk. And although officials say they’ve fixed some of the problems, they still can’t access inmates’ disciplinary records.

[Source : Gizmodo]