CHARLOTTE, N.C. (QUEEN CITY NEWS) — A system software crash forced Mecklenburg County Detention Center inmates to wait longer to make bonds or be processed.
The software crash happened around 4 a.m. Sunday morning during a system “migration.”
The “update” was only supposed to take four hours, but employees within the detention center had begun to receive “error” messages when they tried to access the offender management system.
“There’s been some technical issues,” sheriff deputy chief Rodney Collins said. “There’s been a significant delay caused as a result of those technical issues.”
Queen City News received a tip from a viewer Monday afternoon that the system crash had not been fixed and had begun to impact the time it took for inmates to post bond and be released.
MCSO leaders confirmed that the detention center had seen delays because it had to switch to a manual system of processing inmates.
The delay is believed to have added two hours to processing releases and bookings.
One inmate told Queen City News moments after his release at 8:30 p.m. Monday that he had posted bond at 2:00 p.m. Monday after being brought in Friday evening.
“There may be some delays as a result of this migration, but ultimately, business will still get done,” Collins explained.
The OMS system is critical to operations within the detention center.
The system, however, dates back to 2006 and could be at a higher risk of being breached.
“This system is essentially everything associated with the person that comes into the criminal justice system here in Mecklenburg County from their inception at arrest all the way through their release,” Collins explained. “So every piece of information as to where they’re housed, their bond information, everything associated with their incarceration here, regardless of how brief that is or how long that is, is all in that system.”
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The Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office predicted Monday afternoon that the system would be operational by 8:00 p.m. Monday.
However, that timeline has been moved back to midnight.
In a statement to Queen City News, MCSO said:
“It was recommended we make a full backup of OMS before making it available to users.
The full backup takes about three hours.”
Outside of delays, leaders with the MCSO said operations would continue and that all bookings and releases would be compared to other court systems software to ensure no inmates are released without authorization.
Once the system is back online, the manual information collected during the crash will be entered into the new software.
On Tuesday morning, a Mecklenburg County Sheriff’s Office spokesperson told Queen City News that the migration was completed. The office was “still experiencing minor issues at the moment” but hoped to have them fixed by the end of the day.
