
Software error releases up to 3,200 inmates early - prostoalex
http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/inslee-error-releases-inmates-early-since-2002/
======
jeremycole
"Inslee said the state is working to locate offenders released early who need
to complete their sentences. Five have been returned to prison, according to
Brown."

What can this possibly accomplish? Presumably these people were released,
probably had no idea they were released early, and now have potentially
settled into their life again. Returning them to prison can only do more harm
than letting it go, and seems more spite than justice.

~~~
lultimouomo
Also:

    
    
      The governor ordered the DOC to halt all releases of prisoners whose sentences could have been affected until a hand calculation is done to ensure offenders are being released on the correct date.
    

Since the bug affects 3% of the prisoners, this means they are willingly
illegally detaining 97% of the people that are to be released next month. And
just to add insult to the damage they say they do it to "ensure offenders are
being released on the correct date". Later is _not_ correct.

~~~
pc86
> _whose sentences could have been affected_

If the offense did not include firearms, deadly weapon, of sex offense
enhancements, the inmate does not meet the "could have been affected"
criteria. The same is true if there was no "good time" applied to the sentence
at all.

If they cannot prove that an inmate's scheduled release date is incorrect,
they would be released. The DOC does not have the power to hold an inmate
beyond their release date.

~~~
lultimouomo
> If they cannot prove that an inmate's scheduled release date is incorrect,
> they would be released.

I would hope so, but I think that _at the very least_ the language was chosen
to suggest that they would err on the side of keeping people incarcerated.
That this could be seen as politically rewarding is... scary.

------
danso
Reminds me of a great newspaper investigation in Nebraska a few years back. A
journalist heard a story of an inmate who got released significantly early and
so he and a data reporter scraped the prisons web site and, by doing simple
math based on the scraped fields, found that hundreds of inmates had been
wrongly scheduled...it wasn't quite just a software error, but a too
simplified formula that someone stuck in the system and apparently no one
bothered to double check things [http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/world-herald-
special-investi...](http://www.omaha.com/news/metro/world-herald-special-
investigation-nebraska-prison-doors-open-too-
soon/article_47089734-a15e-5de2-8873-4db298af81c3.html?mode=jqm)

------
asuffield
"the [...] developer needed to make the change had been on leave between
February and September"

Wow. Just wow.

~~~
kzrdude
Parental leave?

~~~
s_q_b
Most likely that or short-term disability, neither of which are shameful (not
that you implied that they are.)

The real problem is that a competent manager would have transferred the work
to another dev.

~~~
adrianN
Maybe the system is byzantine that only this guy understands it well enough to
make the change.

~~~
s_q_b
Yeah, that's likely, but it's also a terrible sign of mismanagement.

I once worked at a big company that had literally _one guy_ that understood
the single sign on system.

------
unindented
It looks like blaming the software and its developers is becoming an easy way
of evading responsibilities for those in charge.

Volkswagen did a similar thing a couple of months ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10710354](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10710354)

~~~
TheCapn
I imagine we'll see more of it as time goes on. Management without a technical
background depend on the expertise of their workers to get things right. They
can only manage work so far but if there's bugs they can't understand or don't
know how to find root cause of they'll have to point the finger eventually.

Besides, if a whole industry of software devs are going to insist on calling
themselves engineers I hope they adopt the ethics and responsibility other
engineers are required to undertake.

~~~
CaptSpify
> Besides, if a whole industry of software devs are going to insist on calling
> themselves engineers I hope they adopt the ethics and responsibility other
> engineers are required to undertake.

What ethics and responsibilities do non-software engineers have that software
engineers don't have?

~~~
stevenbedrick
In many countries, certain kinds of engineering are licensed and regulated
professions. For example:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_en...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_and_licensure_in_engineering#United_States)

It's officially a Big Deal in some branches of engineering- structural,
mechanical, and civil come to mind. My city just built a new bridge over our
river, and the engineers who signed off on its design and construction were
doing so under a certain legal framework that is designed to ensure that the
design was done using proper methodologies, appropriate tests were conducted,
etc. If the bridge fails due to shoddy design, those engineers will personally
face certain professional and legal consequences. That same legal and
regulatory framework gives the engineers certain protections should management
try and make them cut corners on the design or testing (in theory, anyway).

People have been debating for years about whether there ought to be a similar
legal framework for software engineering. There are plenty of good arguments
on both sides of that discussion, IMHO, but the sorts of situation described
by the original article would fall squarely under the "pro" side of the
equation. I can easily envision a world in which, for software that is
critical to a public safety function of government, states had to buy software
written by bonded and licensed engineers. Presumably, under such a framework,
a licensed software engineering company would have to have a system in place
such that their "hit by a bus factor" would be >1- i.e., they'd need to have
sufficient documentation or process in place to enable any single engineer to
go on extended leave without preventing critical bug-fixes from taking place.

This is obviously something that any developer would recognize as a "best
practice", but that in practice is often infeasible due to organizational
constraints. The advantage to a system of regulation and licensure would (in
theory) be that it would empower engineers to demand such practices be in
place in their organizations, and would incentivize companies to set
themselves up to enable such practices. In theory. As the saying goes, "in
theory, there's no difference between theory and practice." Hence why this has
been an ongoing debate in the software world for decades.

------
orange_county
This is a great example of the government being inefficient at getting things
done. However in this case, this ended up saving tax payers money by having
inmates released early.

"Early estimates indicate the offenders were released from prison an average
55 days before their correct release dates, according to Inslee’s general
counsel, Nicholas Brown."

~~~
blfr
_However in this case, this ended up saving tax payers money by having inmates
released early._

I hear this a bit but it doesn't seem include the cost of having criminals in
the streets. At least some of them will re-offend and the sooner they're
released, the younger they will be, the likelier it is that they will. With a
few months across 3500 people, it can add up.

Even if they commit a crime which you believe shouldn't be a crime (some drug
offence), they will consume a lot of resources while going through the legal
system again.

Not to mention the legal mess this bug created that will need to be sorted out
now. Highly doubtful that there were any savings here. Knowing the government
operations, you'll end up paying even more.

~~~
s_q_b
I'm beginning to think we should entirely abolish the punishment motivation in
the criminal justice system.

It negatively affects recidivism rates, creates a huge societal cost, and
really serves no purpose other than vengeance for the victim.

There are many excellent aspects of United States (and other British common
law descendants) law, but they were created without the psychological
understanding we now have of the factors that lead to crime. The current
tripartite understanding of the reasons for prison sentences (punishment,
deterrence, and removal from society) is simply not an accurate reflection of
the reality of how to reduce criminal activity.

Sure, there are some people that we need to just remove from society. However,
these individuals who have truly incurably pathological tendencies toward
illegal actions are relatively rare.

The true purpose of the prison system needs to be reform. We need an evidence-
based approach to crime prevention, not one based on human instinct, or the
haphazard trial and error algorithm that developed our current legal system.
Criminals need to be treated for mental illness, withdrawn from substance
abuse, and most importantly given the socioeconomic tools they need to cope as
law abiding citizens. Anything else is a waste of resources.

~~~
blfr
Except we have no idea how to "reform" people. Even various pre-K programs
return dismal results when tried at any significant scale. And these are
impressionable kids, not hardened criminals.

Perhaps not coincidentally, we also have a rather poor track record of helping
mental patients. You could attribute some of it to mistreatment and
maltreatment but largely we just don't know what to do.

~~~
s_q_b
Absolutely. But the goal needs to be reform. We have some idea of how to
approach it (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, mandatory real time drug and
alcohol monitoring, psychotropics such as antipsychotics, employable
skillsets, stable housing, stable income, anger management, etc.)

We don't entirely know what to do _yet_ , but I bet we could get a lot better
at reform if that's where we focused our efforts, rather than attributing all
crime to moral failing.

~~~
aaronem
That'd be a great idea if psychiatry had any better idea of what moves people
to commit crimes, and how to stop them doing it again, than anyone else does.
And even then, it'd be a terrible idea. You're proposing psychiatry become,
not just an arm of the state, but an arm of the _criminal justice system_ ,
with all the baggage that implies. What in the history of the field gives you
to imagine it's mature enough, with responsible enough practitioners, to be
given that much potential for abuse both well-meaning and otherwise?

------
ohthehugemanate
What?! Washington, get with the program here! We're supposed to be the country
with the longest sentences and highest prison population in the world. This 55
days early thing is wrecking it for everyone!

------
heisenbit
It is worth keeping in mind that the US has a considerably higher proportion
of her population behind bars than others. Mandatory sentencing rules have
lead to escalating prison terms.

Neither do mechanical sentencing rules make a country safe nor does double
counting of good time make a country unsafe.

------
dclowd9901
I'd like to be lazy and call this a core-competency issue, but you'd think if
anything would get a corrections office to back some software work, it'd be
the possibility of erroneously releasing inmates. I really have no explanation
for this aside from simple negligent stupidity.

~~~
tajen
A rounding error on the release date isn't the most sensitive mistake _if_
inmates have already done most of their time (and crime relapse is only
probable because prison and reinsertion programs aren't working). Scheduling
cells and inmates, tracking security cards, tracking prison risks are much
more risky, they can lead to a revolt, guard assasination, etc.

------
stygiansonic
From the timeline of the events, linked to from the article:

[http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/doc-
timeline/](http://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/doc-timeline/)

 _Nov. 3-6: Feuer meets with the IT application manager to discuss the
calculation request. Feuer is told a coding fix is scheduled for Jan. 7, 2016,
and is informed that the contractual coding developer needed to make the
change had been on leave from February to September._

Seems to be a classic case of the "bus factor" [1] being too low, in this
case, only 1.

1\.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bus_factor)

------
V-2
That sounds like a bug that should be fairly easy to catch out. If you don't
write unit tests, you're going to have a bad time (or duplicate amounts of
"good time" as in this case).

~~~
kodablah
This could be a classic example of why unit tests (or at least striving for
coverage alone and not functionality) is not good enough. What the pseudo code
might have looked like:

    
    
        def getReleaseDate() = getStartDate() + (getTotalSentencedDays() * getGoodBehaviorCoefficient())
    

And say all of those functions were covered 100%, then they get the new state
supreme court decision changing the contents of "getTotalSentencedDays" and
even wrote new tests to make sure it included the "enhancements" and what not.
Coverage 100%, unit tests appear to be in order, all done. There was no
"testGetReleaseDateWithGoodBehaviorNotAppliedToEnhancements". Hard to catch
this stuff when you are close to the code.

~~~
V-2
I agree, although as you said, I'd see it as an example of coverage vs.
functionality. Still, if I were to bet, I would put my money on that they had
no test suite at all : ) It's a gamble, but I think my chances would be
favorable : )

~~~
snarfy
Government code? Most likely contractors wrote it. The last time I was a
contractor working on government code it was a two week process to change the
title of a window.

Yeah, no test suite at all.

------
backtoyoujim
The film _Brazil_ escaped from its script.

It is taking over the world.

------
yannk
That's a lot of savings for the state.

~~~
ginko
3,200 inmates being released on average 55 days earlier with (what I found
looking this up[1]) the daily cost to house inmates being $129, that would
amount to about $22.7 million of savings.

[1] [http://www.ehow.com/about_5409377_average-cost-house-
inmates...](http://www.ehow.com/about_5409377_average-cost-house-inmates-
prison.html)

~~~
trbvm2
On the other hand, that is 22.7 million dollars in lost revenue for the
company/companies running Washington's prisons. When viewed from that
perspective, the move to recapture those released early makes a bit more sense
intuitively.

------
tcfunk
“When I learned of this I ordered DOC to fix this, fix it fast, and fix it
right.”

Fast and right, it turns out, don't always agree with each other.

~~~
15155
Fast and right can be had, it just won't be cheap.

------
coderjames
Maybe they were running the sentence software on those new Rockchip SoCs with
the long Novembers :-)

------
asab
This is why you should write tests.

------
heraclez
Elliott Alderson is that you

