Scott Blonien, assistant secretary of the Washington Department of Corrections, said a few minutes ago that his staff estimates 70 to 75 ex-convicts were released from community supervision too early.

An undetermined number of additional inmates -- that could be several hundred or more -- also were classified incorrectly. That means they were given lower risk scores than they should have had and therefore were not monitored as closely when they got out of prison.

Blonien blamed the classification errors on a new "risk assessment tool" that was developed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy.

No one was released from prison too early, he said.

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The assessments, which generally are done while an inmate is still in prison, are used to determine how closely offenders should be monitored once they are released from prison and sent back to the community.

Roxanne Lieb, the institute's director, said one of the components that are used to give each offender a "score" that basically says how risky he or she is, was left out of the new formula. That component is the "base score" an offender gets just for being or having been in prison, she said. That alone makes an offender more likely to commit another crime and that's the component that was left out of the model given to DOC, she said.

"We have identified all of those offenders who may have been released from supervision prematurely," Blonien said in an e-mail to state legislators. "The department is utilizing our own staffing resources and our law enforcement partners to make every effort to locate these offenders to resume supervison."

"I'm hopeful that nobody is going to be harmed," said Sen. Mike Carrell, R-Lakewood, who serves on the Senate Human Services and Corrections Committee and whose legislative district includes the state prison on McNeil Island.
"The institute generally is pretty rigorous. I'm glad they caught it."

Blonien said community corrections officers suspected there was a problem with the new assessment tool because some of the classifications didn't make sense, based on an inmate's criminal history and background.

The state has four classifications for offenders once they are released to the community: high violent; high non-violent; moderate and low. That classification determines level of supervision, such as how often an ex-con must report to his or her "parole officer."

I'll have more in Tuesday's paper. In the meantime, here's the e-mail Blonien sent to state legislators last Thursday.

Lieb said DOC personnel started getting suspicious of the new classification tool at the beginning of October, but the problem was not confirmed until early last week.

This message is being sent on behalf of John Scott Blonien, Assistant Secretary for Government, Community Relations and Regulatory Compliance.

Dear Honorable Members of the Legislature:

As you know, the new Risk Assessment tool that the Department is using was developed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) and was put into effect in August of this year. Recently, Department of Corrections' staff brought some incongruous classification levels to our attention and we asked WSIPP to review the scoring logic behind the tool.

WSIPP discovered that they failed to supply one out of several scoring components and, as a consequence, the offender risk scores were inaccurate. The affected offenders fall into two categories: those who were prematurely released from supervision and those who have been supervised at a lower level. We are aggressively addressing the issues created by this error.

We have identified all of those offenders who may have been released from supervision prematurely. The Department is utilizing our own staffing resources and our law enforcement partners to make every effort to locate these offenders to resume supervision. We have also recalculated the scores for all offenders currently on supervision and are now providing the appropriate level of supervision. WSIPP has also conducted a series of validations of the system and are confident that the new system is now functioning properly.

I hope you have found this information helpful. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact me.

Sincerely,

John Scott Blonien
Assistant Secretary

Sandy Robertson
Executive Assistant
Government, Community Relations and
Regulatory Compliance