South Carolina editorial roundup: Tuesday, April 2, 2019

Recent editorials from South Carolina newspapers:

The Times and Democrat

March 25

Daylight saving time should be changed nationally, not in S.C.

Daylight saving time is back - and it's possible it could not be going away in the future. The issue is fraught with surprising controversy.

Since the introduction of modern daylight-saving time as an emergency measure during the 20th century's two world wars, many countries have been adjusting the clock one hour ahead in spring and winding it back by one hour during fall.

Daylight saving time's current schedule in the United States was established by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which extended summer time from the second Sunday in March to the first Sunday in November, shrinking standard time to just four months of the year.

But there are moves to change that. Already people living in Arizona, Hawaii and the U.S. territories do not change their clocks. And South Carolina lawmakers are considering abandoning the time change also.

The Senate Judiciary Committee unanimously approved a bill that would keep the state on daylight-saving time all year - no falling back an hour in the fall and springing forward an hour in the spring. More than two dozen states are considering similar measures.

The change would require altering federal law, which allows states to opt out of daylight saving time but not the opposite in opting out of standard time.

Two U.S. senators want to remove the decision-making. A measure introduced by Sen. Marco Rubio and Rep. Vern Buchanan, both of Florida, would make daylight saving time permanent nationwide.

The federal proposal makes sense as different times in different states pose problems. Consider that a change by South Carolina and not Georgia and/or North Carolina would effectively put the Palmetto State in a different time zone for part of the year.

Changing time twice a year is far less a headache than would be figuring out what time it is in different states based not only on their time zones, but also whether their elected leaders decide to adopt full-time daylight time year-round.

Unless a national change is made to adopt standard time all year or daylight time year-round, count us among those believing the twice-yearly time change should remain.

The Post and Courier

March 25

Errors in releasing prisoners indicate system in crisis

In response to the mistaken early release of 10 South Carolina prisoners, all convicted of violent crimes, a legislative oversight committee is rightly backing a comprehensive review of how criminal sentences are relayed to prison officials and how release dates are calculated.

The mistakes were pinned on Department of Corrections records clerks who enter inmate data into a computer system that calculates release dates. But by the end of the hearing, lawmakers agreed that the complex and sometimes confusing system itself needed simplifying.

The erroneous releases are symptomatic of a prison system in crisis and suffering from years of neglect, as evidenced most starkly by the deadly rioting that broke out last spring. DOC Director Bryan Stirling is working to put out multiple fires at any given time. It was at least reassuring that Rep. Gary Clary, R-Pickens, a former judge, called for a complete review of how sentencing sheets are filled out and relayed to the DOC.

It was clearly human error that resulted in the early releases, prison officials testified. The computer program calculates release dates based on factors such as jail-time credits and earned work credits, but in each case at issue the inmates were incorrectly listed as "paroleable" instead of "non-paroleable," Trevis Shealy, the department's IT chief, told the panel.

Joette Scarborough, who is in charge of inmate records, said her clerks often consult with judges, prosecutors and the DOC's legal counsel to clarify sentencing orders, but they sometimes make "judgment calls" when entering data. Additionally, the computer program, developed in the mid-1990s, won't accept some state codes for criminal offenses, leaving clerks to use alternate codes from the FBI or other law enforcement agencies, and any mismatch can lead to release-date errors.

Obviously, the computer program needs to be brought up to date, and sentencing orders need to be made clear for DOC employees. Some of them still arrive handwritten. Nonetheless, Mr. Sterling took full responsibility for the mistakes and said the DOC was working to eliminate the vagaries that precipitated them. "The error rate," he said, "should be zero."

The DOC, which already required a records audit before a prisoner can be released, has wisely since added a second internal audit, to be done by a different staffer, to prevent such mistakes, Mr. Shealy said.

Some of the mistakes dated back years, including at least one that predated 2010 sentencing reforms.

"I don't see how anybody keeps up with it," Rep. Clary said at one point, adding that he wondered how many other mistakes had been made that weren't caught or how many prisoners might have been wrongly detained past their release dates.

It was the Department of Probation, Parole and Pardons that called the DOC's attention to erroneous releases. All 10 inmates have been accounted for. Most have been back to court. One will not return to prison. Another is under house arrest, and two others are awaiting hearings.

If the rioting last year wasn't enough, the mistaken release of violent offenders should serve as another wake-up call for legislators to give the DOC the resources it needs to bring staffing up to acceptable levels, modernize systems and help make our prisons more humane.