Fergie's Tech Blog

Victims Told, in Error, Ohio Inmates Were Freed Due to Computer Glitch

An AP newswire article, via USA Today, reports that:

The automated telephone call shook Karla Edwards so badly she couldn't compose herself. On the other end of the phone, a message was telling her the man who was in prison for her sister's slaying had been released.

"I came unglued," Edwards said. "I can't even tell you how bad it was, I couldn't even talk."

Sobbing, she called the sheriff's deputy who investigated her sister's 1998 killing. He started making calls of his own, and hours later, there was another startling discovery: It wasn't true.

Thousands of Ohio crime victims or their family members received calls from a computer notification system Friday mistakenly telling them inmates had been released, a state prisons spokesman said.

posted by Fergie @ 12/31/2005 10:09:00 AM