​This story actually broke in late 2013 but I wanted to discuss it a little more here and for a specific reason.
It was revealed that due to mistakes by employees of the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole, possibly as many as 86,000 files in their system may have been destroyed along with the support letters and other information which might have supported the parole applications of some prisoners and which could have resulted in their release.
While the state tried to correct the mistake by adding employees and going back through the files I think most experts would agree it is extremely unlikely everything was resolved in a manner which would benefit the incarcerated individuals.
Certainly, mistakes happen but this is unforgivable. Men and women may be sitting in prison today who should have been home with their families months ago.
I bring this point up to support one of the concepts in our book, How to Prepare a Texas Parole Packet, that copies of the parole packet should be sent to numerous places just to avoid the possible loss which occurred in this case. I won't go into great detail here, since it is covered in detail in the book, but it is our position at TexasParoleNow.com that parole packets should be sent to multiple offices and multiple people so the chances are increased of the information actually making it into the file and being seen by the voting members of the parole board.
With the increase in the number of services preparing parole packets, see our previous articles on that issue here and here, it is particularly important that someone oversee the distribution of the packets of information. All of the parole packet services I have seen, note that I am not talking about Texas parole lawyers just the groups without lawyers, send their copy or copies only to the main office, which is apparently the one which made this mistake.
It's better to have too many copies of a parole packet in the system than not enough!