It's taking a little longer than expected.Â
Department of Correctional Services Director Scott Frakes said Friday a new system to automatically calculate sentences of prison inmates, replacing a decades-old computer calculation system, will not be complete until early 2016.
"It is important that this project is done right the first time, and I am confident my team's work will restore public trust in the department's application of sentences," Frakes said. Â
As the calculation project has proceeded, he said, it has become clear there was more to it than originally known, and more rules had to be built into the software. Questions led to more questions and more interpretations, said Beth Boal, the state's lead applications analyst.Â
Frakes believes they have the answers to those questions and can now proceed with building the software needed.Â
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A major error in calculating sentences was discovered last year. Those errors led to the early release of hundreds of prisoners.
Then the department announced in June that in trying to fix those errors, it had uncovered problems in calculating sentences for inmates with another type of credits, so-called enhanced good time credits.
Enhanced good time became a part of Nebraska law in 2011, and inmates started receiving those credits in 2012. The law (LB191) removes three days a month from sentences of inmates who go a certain amount of time without misconduct reports.Â
Approximately 2,000 inmates have received enhanced good time credit, and 340 of those inmates are set for release this summer, along with 50 others who did not receive that credit. The department continues to manually review them to ensure the credits have been applied correctly.Â
Frakes provided a list of 29 inmates scheduled to be released between June 10 and Aug. 31 that had adjustments to their enhanced good time credits -- 23 with between three and 21 days awarded in error. Six had earned three days of credits that had not been properly awarded.
It is unknown if some inmates were released early because of the enhanced good time calculations, Frakes said. But even if they knew they were, the department could not bring them back to prison while three former miscalculation cases are pending in court.
But no one since June 10 has been released incorrectly, he said. Those sentences have been hand-checked two to three times.Â
Changing the process will make calculating sentences more reliable, with less possibility for human error and interpretation.Â
"Sentence calculation in itself is an extremely complex set of rules," Boal said.Â
Past problems with calculating sentences and not following Supreme Court directives on doing that led to early releases of inmates in recent years, and the eventual early retirements and resignations of a number of corrections administrators singled out for mismanagement of the process.Â