Prisoner Problems
As cases of disconcerting irony go, this one’s a doozie. Two days after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the State of California must release roughly 33,000 inmates to alleviate overcrowding in its prisons, comes a report that California prison officials have mistakenly let loose a horde of violent offenders. This from the L.A. Times:
Computer errors prompted California prison officials to mistakenly release an estimated 450 inmates with “a high risk for violence” as unsupervised parolees in a program meant to ease overcrowding, according to the state’s inspector general.
More than 1,000 additional prisoners presenting a high risk of committing drug crimes, property crimes and other offenses were also let out, officials said.
No attempt was made to return any of the offenders to state lockups or place them on supervised parole, said inspector general spokeswoman Renee Hansen.
All of the prisoners were placed on “non-revocable parole,” whose participants are not required to report to parole officers and can be sent back to prison only if caught committing a crime. The program was started in January 2010 for inmates judged to be at very low risk of reoffending, leaving parole agents free to focus on supervising higher-risk parolees.
…
State Sen. Ted Lieu (D-Torrance), a former prosecutor who requested an investigation of the unsupervised-parole program, said the inspector general’s report “confirms my worst fears” about it.
Fortunately, nothing like that could happen here. Right?
A man charged with kidnapping and rape was mistakenly released from the Mecklenburg County Jail. He was being held on $105,500 bond. A press release from Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department says a magistrate last Thursday mistakenly changed the bond conditions for Martin Russell Diamond. Diamond then signed himself out and has been on the loose ever since. CMPD says it didn’t find out about the release until Tuesday.
Diamond was arrested May 18th on charges of kidnapping and rape. CMPD says he should be considered extremely dangerous.
Sleep well, citizen.
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