Most people would agree that our trial and prison systems are not perfect. However, most individuals would also agree that we need some way to prosecute those who commit crimes. We must incarcerate them to demonstrate that law and order have their proper place in our society.
Wherever and whenever we can improve the justice system, we should certainly endeavor to do so. If an egregious miscarriage of justice occurs, we should try to learn from it so that it does not happen again.
That’s why we need to pay particular attention to what happened in Arizona recently. Prison operators should regard it as a cautionary tale.
Senate Bill 1310
Doug Ducey, Arizona’s State Senator, signed a particular bill, 1310, into law back in June of 2019. The bill was about prisoners convicted of nonviolent drug crimes. There were plenty of them in Arizona prisons, just as there are all over the country.
The bill stated that they could earn their release from prison. They could earn three days for every seven that would count against their original sentence. The qualified prisoners could also complete a drug-treatment program that could knock down their jail time even more.
We should note that unless one of these prisoners contacted a criminal defense lawyer who knew all about the bill, some of those who were eligible did not know about it. Some of their family members found about it and were able to tell them, but many were not aware of its existence.
SB 1310 FAQ
Senate Bill 1310, which some people began abbreviating as SB 1310, had an FAQ section so prisoners and other interested parties could acquaint themselves with how it would work. In that section, it stated that prisoner friends or family should not contact the Department of Corrections about whether a particular individual was eligible. The software the DOC put in place was supposed to handle all of that automatically.
The issue was that the software did not work as it was supposed to. There was a glitch that existed and continued to, even after the DOC paid a software company an excess of $24 million to correct it.
This IT company built and maintained the software that was supposed to automatically review any qualified prisoners’ cases. It doesn’t seem likely that the software company created the software with the glitch intentionally. Instead, the software was simply faulty, and the company lacked the knowledge of it or the ability to correct it.
How Did the Public Find Out About the Glitch?
The only reason that the general public found about the software glitch and the damage it was doing was that whistleblowers came forward to reveal it. They stated that certain prison officials knew about the glitch early on when the software company put the framework in place, but they did not take action to fix it.
Essentially, this means that because of these individuals’ inaction, certain prisoners had to stay in jail for longer than they should have. This went against the bill’s nature and was unfair to them.
There are hundreds of Arizona prisoners who might have benefitted from the bill, but they have not yet been able to do so. Again, these are nonviolent individuals who only committed minor drug-related offenses. Most people would agree that they have no business being behind bars, at least not for long prison bids.
What Can We Learn from this Mistake?
The software not working is unfortunate, but what’s troubling about this incident is the thought that there were prison officials in prominent positions who knew about the problem for months and did nothing about it. The Arizona DOC needs to discipline these individuals, so they know what they did was wrong.
We can learn a couple of different things from this event. The first is that some prison officials are corrupt, and they will go out of their way to mistreat the prisoners who are under their control.
The other thing that we can learn is that software companies are by no means infallible and that sometimes, they can make costly mistakes. The prisoners who have had to stay in jail for longer than they should are evidence of this.
Those prisoners are within their rights to contact lawyers to try to get them out early, software glitch or no. As a society, we should also note what happened and make every effort to avoid similar incidents in the future.
