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.
At a news conference Tuesday, Gov. Jay Inslee said he had ordered immediate steps to correct the long-standing problem.
Authorities say a July 2002 state Supreme Court ruling required the DOC to apply "good time" credits earned in county jail to state prison sentences. However the programming fix ended up giving prisoners with sentencing enhancements too much good time.
A broad fix to the software problem is expected to be in place by early January.
An analysis showed that as many as 3,200 offenders were released early. The median number of days for early release was 49. Based on a prior Supreme Court ruling, most of the affected offenders won't have to go back to prison.
Inslee says two retired federal prosecutors will conduct an independent investigation to figure out why it took so long to discover and fix the problem.
In the meantime, the governor has ordered state corrections officials to stop some prison releases until a hand calculation is done to ensure the offender is being released on the correct date.
