Investigators commissioned by Gov. Jay Inslee to look into the state's early releases of scandal made public their report today. Senate Republicans weren't happy with the report.
The report comes as the conclusion of the investigation that Inslee launched in December alongside an emergency effort to fix a computation error that resulted in the sentences of more than 3,000 state inmates being miscalculated. At least two people died as the result of crimes committed by inmates released early.
“There were systemic errors over several years that undermined the core mission of DOC, which is to protect the public,” Inslee said.
The report featured recommendations including increased oversight of IT operations in all state agencies and the creation of an ombuds position at the DOC to help whistleblowers report future problems.
The day also saw a press conference from Republican Sens. Mike Padden and Steve O'Ban, who portrayed the report as not looking deeply enough into the culpability of top executives at the Department of Corrections. They also said that their investigation had found that the former head of the DOC had dedicated resources to his own projects to such an extent that basic maintenance — including fixing the early release problem — got short shrift.
"We had several witnesses emphasize the fact that resources were drawn away from this fix, at the very moment the department should have been making it a top priority,” O'Ban said.
Padden also said that the governor had broken a promise he made at the beginning of the process to release the findings unedited. The governor did edit the report, Padden said. When asked later about the edits, he said they did not appear to have been substantive edits, but that he objected to them on principle.
The Republicans said their own parallel investigation has no firm wrap-up date. O'Ban and Padden are together running an investigation launched by Republicans in early January, among other things because Republicans claimed the governor's investigation had no firm timeline, and would likely take too long to complete.
