The Cincinnati Enquirer filed a Freedom of Information Act request in December to find out how many notifications are made each year, and how many were found to be in error. The Office of Victim Services sends out approximately 300 notification letters per month, and around 3,600 per year. These figures are estimates, due to the fact that we do not have a tracking system in place that monitors how many notifications are sent in any given year. In terms of the numbers of errors that have occurred, staff can recall approximately three to four notifications that were sent out in error over the past two and a half to three years. All errors can be attributed to that of human error.
Relatives can submit arguments for or against release.
Ms. Cress' date was Nov. 30. Her notice included directions to the meeting. According to Georgia Hart, assistant to the Administrator at Victim Services, the error occurred when Victim Services accessed a preliminary list of parole candidates. That list is computer-generated and is based solely on a percentage of the sentence served. A subsequent list, typically used for notifications, weeds out those ineligible, as Ms. Courtney was.