Software Bug Keeping Hundreds Of Inmates In Arizona Prisons Beyond Release Dates (kjzz.org) 159
According to Arizona Department of Corrections whistleblowers, hundreds of incarcerated people who should be eligible for release are being held in prison because the inmate management software cannot interpret current sentencing laws. From a report: KJZZ is not naming the whistleblowers because they fear retaliation. The employees said they have been raising the issue internally for more than a year, but prison administrators have not acted to fix the software bug. The sources said Chief Information Officer Holly Greene and Deputy Director Joe Profiri have been aware of the problem since 2019. The Arizona Department of Corrections confirmed there is a problem with the software. As of 2019, the department had spent more than $24 million contracting with IT company Business & Decision, North America to build and maintain the software program, known as ACIS, that is used to manage the inmate population in state prisons. One of the software modules within ACIS, designed to calculate release dates for inmates, is presently unable to account for an amendment to state law that was passed in 2019.
Not a bug (Score:3, Insightful)
While I'l have sympathy for the people being incarcerated beyond their sentences, the system is working as it was designed and is not experiencing a bug.
It's just that the specifications changed and the program has not yet been updated to reflect those changes.
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
Then what's your definition of a bug? Most bugs are the result of the code stupidly doing what it was designed to do and not what the human specifiers wanted. Hell, a "free then use" bug is the system working as it was designed. Or writing off the end of an array. An infinite loop. All are properly executing instructions as designed.
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Informative)
I disagree with you, but even if I didn't you would only looking at the most recently reported of 14,000 bugs reported since Nov. 2019. The failures to properly track inmate health resulting in them not getting medication when they move between wings? The housing algorithm failing to ensure that assignments don't mix cellmates in different gangs? The errors in tracking inmates' commissary? The unoverridable issue where the system decided to punish an inmate with a 30-day inability to to make phone calls even though they were innocent?
The fact is that the programmers told management it was unreliable and not shippable prior to deployment means that it was both extremely buggy and a management failure.
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The fact is that the programmers told management it was unreliable and not shippable prior to deployment means that it was both extremely buggy and a management failure.
Isn't this how every software house in the universe works?
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
This seems to be a failure of the management
Perhaps not. Who is profiting from inmates staying incarcerated?
For-profit prisons get paid per occupied bunk. More inmates mean more money and power for the guard unions.
The PIC [wikipedia.org] is incestuous, and the software developer may have a relationship with someone who directly profits from this "mistake".
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Re:Not a bug (Score:4, Insightful)
All are properly executing instructions as designed
No, you're confusing "as designed" with "as implemented".
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not unusual. Along with their cousins "as intended", "as ordered" and "as invoiced" which are all completely unrelated to each other.
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A bug is when the software either
-does obviously wrong things, like losing data on occasion
-or does not confirm to specifications as ordered. If the specification gets changed after the fact, it becomes more complicated. The developer needs adequate time to implement the requested feature. Only if that does not happen in reasonable time, the lack of the new feature can be considered a bug.
In this case it seems to be even more complicated. Requirements changed in form of the underlying laws.
Re:Not a bug (Score:4, Informative)
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I mean, trivially this code isn't working to the specification. The specification is spelled out in law and the code doesn't conform to it. You can say that the bug is the managers fault for translating the specification poorly, but it's still a bug.
I'm saying this bug is just as real a bug as an infinite loop. You can treat both as bugs (I do) or neither.
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
For profit prison doesn't get software upgraded so reflect earlier releases so they continue to get paid.
Yep sounds about right.
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
For profit prison doesn't get software upgraded so reflect earlier releases so they continue to get paid. Yep sounds about right.
For profit Greed realizes it's not sheltered behind any protective laws so massive lawsuits are in order. Yep sounds about right.
Nope, don't even give a shit if the lawyers end up with most of it. A $24 million dollar piece of shit software "solution" should be rewarded with a $240 million dollar class-action.
Re:Not a bug (Score:4, Informative)
the ADC, as the name implies, is a governmental agency.
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and tax payers stuck with the bill to keep people? (Score:2)
and tax payers stuck with the bill to keep people?
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Re:and tax payers stuck with the bill to keep peop (Score:4, Insightful)
Paying per inmate creates the incentive to keep people locked up unnecessarily.
Paying for full occupancy when the prison is not full causes a different problem. There becomes an incentive to release inmates. While in an ideal world this would result in rehabilitation so that inmates can be released safely and won't commit further crimes to be sent back, the world is far from ideal and the actual outcome will be dangerous prisoners being released too soon.
Also having fewer inmates would eventually result in less demand for prisons, so rehabilitation is not in the interest of for-profit prisons.
Using profit as a motivator often has undesirable consequences.
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They should pay based on recidivism: if a prisoner winds up back in gaol within 5 years, the prison doesn't get paid, or the cost of a current prisoner is deducted. Give them an incentive to rehabilitate.
Or not have for profit prisons.
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That payment incentive would certainly be better than today's situation, but money per prisoner should not be part of any equation really.
The only way to get meaningful, significant improvement in recidivism is have prisons run as state institutions which has that as its primary goal. There is a very good documentary called Breaking the cycle [youtube.com] where the title reflect what is the goal of the the Norwegian prison system, namely breaking the cycle that gets people into prison. Norway's recidivism number is m
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and tax payers stuck with the bill to keep people?
Exactly, yes. People who help the private prison's bottom line.
Not a bug. Working as intended.
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well, there's that, too.
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
While I'l have sympathy for the people being incarcerated beyond their sentences, the system is working as it was designed and is not experiencing a bug.
It's just that the specifications changed and the program has not yet been updated to reflect those changes.
If only there was a way (say) an actual person could use something other than a computer/software, like pen and paper, to affect their release and then update the data after the software's been updated ... I mean, who's in charge there, people or computers?
You can bet if continuing to house these prisoners hurt the prison's bottom-line rather than helping it, these prisoners would be out already, software update be damned.
Re:Not a bug (Score:4, Insightful)
Or, alternately, if these prisoners had any decent legal representation.
But I guess if you're taking a computer programming course in prison to earn credits for early release, then good legal representation is out of reach.
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But I guess if you're taking a computer programming course in prison to earn credits for early release, ...
Hmm... I have an idea as to where the prison can find help updating the software/computers ... :-)
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No offense, but that's the definition of a bug.
It DOESN'T have have to be that the code doesn't match the spec...the spec can (and will) change.
I might point out that while the tax law specs can change.... you *STILL* expect your entire tax re
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The organization responsible for keeping track of this had some software built for that purpose, the law changed in a way that the software wasn't built to handle, and it predictably does not work correctly now. It is the organization's responsibility, not the software's, to follow the laws and letting them off the hook for that does not help. Organization's do this sort of thing all the time,
Re: Not a bug (Score:4, Informative)
A bug would be the result of the following series of events:
1) original system works as designed/specified
2) design changes result revised specifications
3) programmers modify code to incorporate revised specifications
4) upon release of modified code, it is found that the software does not match specifications
In other words it's a bug when programmers say it does one thing, and the code actually does another.
Changing the specifications without programmers either modifying the code to match the specifications or claiming it matches the new specifications is called "un-implemented changes", not a bug.
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No offense, but that's the definition of a bug.
How about we redefine the requirements for whatever worthless degree you clearly have and then take your degree away. Clearly its a bug that you still have the degree since you dont meet the current requirements.
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Considering that every language I work in (except one) wasn't developed until after I graduated - I might agree with you. :-)
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And if you worked out how much refund to expect on a copy of financial software not updated since 2002 and claimed it was a bug because it didn't apply current rules I might point out that you were a fool.
It is funnier than that (Score:2)
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Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Insightful)
Only a fool would design a system which spit out an answer an authorized human being couldn't override.
This should be a non-issue.
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Many systems are intentionally designed this way. If you give users flexibility, they will use that flexibility to work around the bugs but that scares the developers into thinking they will screw things up if given too much flexibility (which also does happen).
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While I'l have sympathy for the people being incarcerated beyond their sentences, the system is working as it was designed and is not experiencing a bug.
It's just that the specifications changed and the program has not yet been updated to reflect those changes.
Well, technically you're right. It's not merely a "bug" anymore. It's now been upgraded to an obscenely expensive piece of shit software solution that can't manage to accommodate changes that should have honestly been part of the original specification. Laws change. Sentences can change. That's not a new thing.
$24 million spent on that. Fucking hell...
Re:Not a bug (Score:4, Informative)
This is the kind of comment I would expect from someone that just says "Sorry, I cannot do anything because you did not open a ticket."
Change control is not the answer here.
Re:Not a bug (Score:5, Interesting)
And thus anyone being held beyond their prison sentence can sue the state of Arizona and most likely win. The state of Arizona is not constrained by the software, it has the ability to release prisoners without permission from the software. This is how things worked before computers were put in charge of humanity.
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Assuming they're aware of this..
Assuming they can afford a competent lawyer who will actually win the case for them.
The system is stacked against the little guy.
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What would require a halfway competent lawyer is the wrongful imprisonment suit. That a prison can't manage its internal paperwork is no justification for holding someone beyond the length of their sentence. That's not a mitigating factor, it's an aggravating factor th
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The state of Arizona is not constrained by the software, it has the ability to release prisoners without permission from the software. This is how things worked before computers were put in charge of humanity.
Ah but that means you have to fill in the right form. Did you fill in the right form? No that's not it, go to the back of the queue and try again...
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Re:Not a bug (Score:4, Insightful)
You have utterly missed the point. This is noteworthy not over the technicality of whether it is a bug or an outdated feature. This is noteworthy because a software system is keeping inmates beyond their sentences. You are like the guy in Brazil saying "It wasn't my fault that Buttle's heart condition didn't appear on Tuttle's file." As if establishing exactly who is at fault is the most important thing. And not that fact that Buttle is dead.
Re: Not a bug (Score:3, Insightful)
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The whole debate that ensued from your comment about whether or not it's a bug was pretty pedantic and pointless. I don't think anyone was confused by what the author meant when he used the word 'bug' to describe the situation, so even if it wasn't 100% the correct word, he still effectively communicated his point. The fact that a bunch of posters could engage in such an extended debate as to whether the word was appropriate demonstrates that it wasn't an egregious error—if it was an error at all.
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Yes, but if those "specifications" are actual laws, then the operator of such a program is obligated to commission, develop and implement those changed "specifications" or cease operation of said software.
solution (Score:5, Insightful)
Some fund should get them all lawyer or lawyers and sue for wrongful imprisonment, and piles of damages. They will fix it when presented with a monetary reason to do so. That's capitalism, baby.
Re: solution (Score:2, Insightful)
Itâ(TM)s an early release program, they would not be eligible for a full release anyway, so it would be hard to argue that itâ(TM)s wrongful imprisonment when they would still be imprisoned in some form.
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It's an early release program, they would not be eligible for a full release anyway, so it would be hard to argue that it's wrongful imprisonment when they would still be imprisoned in some form.
Yes, but a less "actually still in prison" form.
Uh, no it's not. (Score:2)
Establishing a fund to cover legal fees has very little to do with private ownership of the means of production. Even under socialist systems, there are legal fees and law suits.
Soverign Immunity (Score:5, Informative)
The state will be covered under sovereign immunity. You won't be able to sue them unless they say that you can.
If that goes through, they'll claim absolute immunity. That is, you can't sue them for doing their job, even if they aren't doing a good job.
Cases exactly like this have come up before and, mostly, have been thrown out of court. The only time you have a shot is if you were sent to prison because the prosecutor did something *majorly* wrong.
Re:Soverign Immunity (Score:4, Interesting)
The state will be covered under sovereign immunity.
I'm not certain that this is a real impediment. As long as they are being sued for failure to perform some duty and the judgement is "Well then, just do it." No damages or other penalty. Our state is always losing such lawsuits. Legislation restricts the state from doing something. people sue and win. State says "Aw shucks. I guess we'll just have to do it then." We either have the most incompetent Attorney General (who's task it is to defend the state). Or the A.G. throws more games than a crooked quarterback.
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Arizona uses privatized prisons who get paid by the man-day (actually beds used)
This would present them with an opportunity to line their pockets with little effort
I think they may have some legal exposure, particularly if they were involved in decision not to change release dates
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Judges and prosecutors have absolute immunity, everyone else here would only have qualified immunity. The judges and prosecutors don't calculate the release date themselves, the judge imposes a sentence (e.g. x months), and the prison system calculates the exact release date including determining credit for good behavior or participation in programs, which modifies the date continuously as you can gain o
Re:Soverign Immunity (Score:4, Interesting)
For ordinary civil cases this might be true, but unlawful imprisonment is the state breaking the law and you won't need permission from the state to sue them for breaking the law.
This ties directly to civil rights of prisoners who are in the care of the state, that absolves sovereign immunity on it's own. Failing to release a prisoner at their due time without cause immediately becomes false imprisonment and all sorts of civil violations and saying the computer said you can't release them isn't a defense.
As others have pointed out it's the state that's holding the prisoners, not the software.
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Might this be a job for a class-action suit?
Why not go Open Source? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is a case where Open Source would help, because instead of having a black buggy box making decisions, you could have an open buggy box, that can be audited, debugged and maintained making decisions. Laws and Bills change, and it would be a basic requirement that any software would have to react to those changes, which also raises the question why the 2000 hours would be required? 2000 hours is effectively 1 full time year with some overtime, if a bug takes a 1 year of full time work to solve then it's a design flaw, not a bug.
This has all the tell tail signs of a platform that was patched together, with substandard components, that was underfunded and overseen by people who lacked knowledge and experience.
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Can't use open source. Whatever would happen if someone stumbled across the line of code
if( inmate.name == "Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman" ) inmate.release_date = now;
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Proprietary solutions, on the other hand, can and have sued to keep their mistakes trade secrets.
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Reading the short list of considerations that the software has to make, and acknowledging the real list would be massive, it doesn't sounds overly complex to maintain the relationships. This sounds like a classic case where software has been developed but not planned or structured in a way to make it functional, and certainly no consideration has been given to the auditing or testing of the code itself.
This is a case where Open Source would help, because instead of having a black buggy box making decisions, you could have an open buggy box, that can be audited, debugged and maintained making decisions. Laws and Bills change, and it would be a basic requirement that any software would have to react to those changes, which also raises the question why the 2000 hours would be required? 2000 hours is effectively 1 full time year with some overtime, if a bug takes a 1 year of full time work to solve then it's a design flaw, not a bug.
It's a new feature meaning new requirement docs, design docs, tests to make sure it doesn't break other features, QA for the feature, documentation so user's know how to use it, training for users, etc, etc.
2000 hours is high, but I've seen features that didn't sound much more complicated take ridiculously long amounts of time.
This has all the tell tail signs of a platform that was patched together, with substandard components, that was underfunded and overseen by people who lacked knowledge and experience.
I don't think that's relevant. I've seen enough code to know that making an app open source doesn't cause a bunch of talented maintainers to magically appear. The only people working
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If I'm writing a system that has to manage release times, I'd make the system flexible enough to acco
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I would suggest that a better solution is some sort of standards-based model where the mark-up is included as part of the law. Admittedly mark-up languages are typically messy, but still better than trying to parse out regular language.
if penal code in (1234, 9876, 3333) and guilty = TRUE then
15 years
Energy release waiting to happen (Score:2)
Sauce for the goose (Score:2, Insightful)
If the government is illegally holding citizens, we get told it's a "glitch" or a "paperwork error". If innocent men are in jail, we should be kicking in doors and sending in an army to free them. Sauce for the goose.
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Time to storm the Bastille. But they only freed seven prisoners when that happened.
That's Kidnapping (Score:2)
Those involved should be criminally charged. If the justice system refuses to do anything about it, people will.
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It's really bad. (Score:5, Insightful)
From TFA:
According to the sources, the entire inmate management software program, known as ACIS, has experienced more than 14,000 bugs since it was implemented in November of 2019.
âoeIt was Thanksgiving weekend,â one source recalled. âoeWe were killing ourselves working on it, but every person associated with the software rollout begged (Deputy Director) Profiri not to go live.â
But multiple sources involved in the rollout said they were instructed by department leadership to âoenot say a wordâ about their concerns. âoeWe were told âWeâ(TM)re too deep into it â" too much money had been spent â" we canâ(TM)t go back now.â(TM)â
Since the rollout, department sources say several other programs have failed to perform correctly, including modules that track inmate health care, head counts, inmate property, commissary and financial accounts, religious affiliation, security classification, and gang affiliations.
And it goes on with screwed up migrations etc. That company is charging hundreds of hours of work for software amendments at around $700/hour. Somebody high up got their buddies a great contract... If they used actual devs they would have functional software by now so they would not be able to milk for more...
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Welcome to the world of enterprise software. Everyone hates it, it's easy to rag on it, but consider for a moment the constraints:
1. You are writing custom code for one user. Or maybe a handful of users. That means that all the salaries for the entire dev team, QA team, POs, PMs, managers, finance, HR, IT, facilities, salestaff, marketing costs, etc -- are paid by a small group of customers. Who gets special code made just for them. This is why it's so crappy yet also so expensive. This is why the "fully l
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Even those people understand quality-control and test suites. Or they can learn, which makes the job far less boring. No, this is another corporatioin choosing 'wine and dine' sales expense over investing in its staff.
Writing code to do the everyday stuff, requires moderate skill. That's why CASE tools exist. Problem is, most problems have edge-cases and legacy interactions with other systems. Getting that correct requires forward-planning, continuous user feedback and quality-control. If the work pr
One question (Score:2)
Have you tried rebooting?
From the developer, Offered services. (Score:2)
"DEV/OPS SERVICES
DevOps means you are constantly in the process of upgrading, fixing, adding new functionality every weekâ"no more waiting for new functionality to be added only once or twice a year. "
They should have this fixed next week.
Oh, so that's where they went! (Score:2)
As of 2019, the department had spent more than $24 million contracting with IT company Business & Decision, North America to build and maintain the software program, known as ACIS, that is used to manage the inmate population in state prisons.
Now we know where all the programmers that crafted the original Healthcare Enrollment ("Obamacare") website went - they went to Business & Decision, North America...
More Rubbish Headlines (Score:3)
The headline really is crap
1) It's not a bug : It's doing what it's designed to do. The issue is the rules have changed and the software hasn't been amended
2) Were there any actual verified cases of people being incarcerated one day more than they legally should have been due to staff miscalculating dates ? Probably yes but until that's confirmed the headline is wrong
Honestly Slashdot just posts any old shite that's submitted without reading it. I keep coming back thinking the site might just get some of it's mojo back but it really is becoming fucking hopeless
USA's Shame (Score:4, Insightful)
- Imprison 5x more people than similar western countries per capita... even Australia which was founded by convicts.
- Make sure prison is so debilitating and non reforming that the prisoner becomes a non functioning member of society.
- 10x the gun homicides.
- A Bankrupting for profit healthcare system
- Treat workers like cattle (lack of paid holidays, sick pay, at will termination)
Not why sure Americans put up with such crap that most other western countries have moved on from
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And if anyone dares to criticize the system, accuse them of wanting to set murderers and child-rapists free. Never fails to win over an audience.
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We're an overly litigious society, but inmates incarcerated beyond their sentences need to be identified to launch a class action lawsuit against dept of corrections and the IT company involved. This is abhorrent.
But is it really? I mean how are sentences decided? The judge says 7 years for this guy, 8 years for that one, it's all pretty random to start with. Take some randomness and add in a little more randomness doesn't even get close to sounding bad. And if they're violent criminals, they can stay in there forever for all I care. I wonder how many of these 'victims' have actual victims out there that are quietly happy about this turn of events.
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I know nothing about these people, so I'm just going to assume whatever the hell I like, and then make inferrences and decisions based on made up bullshit to justify my apathy about the situation. I also don't care about what basically amounts to extra-judicial punishment and have no problem with governments breaking their own laws.
Good to know.
Was Kamila Harris involved? (Score:2)
You'll recall that, while she was CA's attorney general, her office tried to keep non-violent prisoners in for a while after they were elegible for release, to serve on fire-fighting lines. Extended sentences, involuntary servitude, and high risk as a result of good behavior.
Biden called her on it during the nomination debates. She claimed her underlings did it without her knowledge and in opposition to her wishes, and she only heard about it when the court ruled against it and the press got hold of it.
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She claimed her underlings did it without her knowledge and in opposition to her wishes, and she only heard about it when the court ruled against it and the press got hold of it.
NIce try twisting it sound like she was unaware of a conspiracy to keep inmates longer than their sentence.
The issue was inmates eligible for EARLY RELEASE. And the thing that happened "without her knowledge" was a MEMO written by her ATTORNEYS to the court, not this imagined conspiracy of keeping inmates past their sentence.
Also, the firefighting thing was a policy since the 1940s apparently, not something Kamala dreamt up as you imply.
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And again, the firefighter prisoner program started in th
Not a software problem (Score:2)
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Re:not hard (Score:5, Insightful)
The for-profit prison industry.
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*ding* *ding*
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TLDR I can't tell if anyone was actually incarcerated beyond the sentence mandated by the court. If a person is incarcerated beyond what the court mandated their sentence to be served, I would think a simple writ of habeas corpus would be sufficient to secure release regardless of software issues. Even if an inmate doesn't have representation, prisons have well equipped law libraries and filing motions, writs, causes of action and appeals are free of filing fees.
Once the writ is filed a jurist must decide i
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And you assume the inmates have access to this. What sort of utopia do you live in?