A. A person commits unlawful imprisonment by knowingly restraining another person.
B. In any prosecution for unlawful imprisonment, it is a defense that:
1. The restraint was accomplished by a peace officer or detention officer acting in good faith in the lawful performance of his duty; or
2. The defendant is a relative of the person restrained and the defendant's sole intent is to assume lawful custody of that person and the restraint was accomplished without physical injury.
C. Unlawful imprisonment is a class 6 felony unless the victim is released voluntarily by the defendant without physical injury in a safe place before arrest in which case it is a class 1 misdemeanor.
D. For the purposes of this section, "detention officer" means a person other than an elected official who is employed by a county, city or town and who is responsible for the supervision, protection, care, custody or control of inmates in a county or municipal correctional institution. Detention officer does not include counselors or secretarial, clerical or professionally trained personnel.
You’re assuming that agents of the government are expected to follow their own laws. Those laws are for you and me, not our beknighted public servants.
Their list is of people eligible for a program that would give them an early release, so unless the inmate enrolls the prison would be acting in good faith. Almost like the law was intentionally worded to limit their liability.
> Isn't this clearly defined false imprisonment under Arizona law?
> Assumption being that a detention officer is not acting in good faith if they have a list of people who should no longer be detained under state law.
I agree with your premise and assertion, but I'm not sure that's exactly what's happening here. I'd like to preface this by saying I absolutely believe there need to be ramifications; I'm just not sure that it fits "clearly defined false imprisonment." I think a category would have to be added to the false imprisonment statute for "negligence" for this to be considered false imprisonment and let me tell you why:
From what I can tell, this article is talking about a couple of massive issues but the wrongful imprisonment bit is about a specific bug (SB1310) in ACIS that can't calculate an updated release date for inmates that complete special programs that award additional release credits as per an amendment signed into law in 2019. Since they can't automatically update a release date for individuals that have completed this program, they keep track of it manually. To me, the article doesn't read like they have a list of people who should be released but aren't being released because the software says so; from my very limited perspective it reads like there are certain programs an inmate can complete to earn extra release credits and since the system can't track these extra credits, the detention officers do it manually. I would imagine their manual process goes something like this:
1) Compile list of inmates that have earned extra release credits through the aforementioned release programming.
2) Select inmate from list, possibly in order of original release date, earliest first.
3) Calculate the amount of release credits they received from completion of the programming.
4) Calculate the total hours those credits equal.
5) Deduct hours from release date.
6) Manually update the release date in ACIS (likely requiring warden and/or judicial approval, but idk).
6a) Since ACIS now has the appropriate release date, the inmate will be processed for release now (if the date has passed) or as they normally would be.
6b) Remove inmate's name from list unless currently enrolled in early release programming, in which case they are moved to the bottom of the queue.
7) Lather, rinse, repeat.
Being denied release because of a software error would be hellish for both an inmate and their loved ones... But because it doesn't seem like they have an actual list of people that should have already been released but haven't been because the software made a critical oversight, I don't think it fits the legislation as it exists today for false imprisonment. The tool is broken so they've switched to manual calculation until someone more important decides it's worth fixing.
If we add negligence to the false imprisonment statute, I'd agree wholeheartedly! But IA[very_much]NAL, so I'll confess I don't really know anything about anything.
Here's the relevant statute:
13-1303. Unlawful imprisonment; classification; definition
A. A person commits unlawful imprisonment by knowingly restraining another person.
B. In any prosecution for unlawful imprisonment, it is a defense that:
1. The restraint was accomplished by a peace officer or detention officer acting in good faith in the lawful performance of his duty; or
2. The defendant is a relative of the person restrained and the defendant's sole intent is to assume lawful custody of that person and the restraint was accomplished without physical injury.
C. Unlawful imprisonment is a class 6 felony unless the victim is released voluntarily by the defendant without physical injury in a safe place before arrest in which case it is a class 1 misdemeanor.
D. For the purposes of this section, "detention officer" means a person other than an elected official who is employed by a county, city or town and who is responsible for the supervision, protection, care, custody or control of inmates in a county or municipal correctional institution. Detention officer does not include counselors or secretarial, clerical or professionally trained personnel.
https://www.azleg.gov/ars/13/01303.htm
Assumption being that a detention officer is not acting in good faith if they have a list of people who should no longer be detained under state law.