**Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect Seyler’s capture.**
An Oahu Community Correctional Center work furlough inmate has been captured.
Daniel Seyler left Wednesday at 5:15 a.m. from Laumaka to go to work and failed to return at 10:30 p.m.
Honolulu police confirmed he was arrested just after 5 p.m. Thursday in Pearl City.
KHON2 looked into his criminal records and discovered a long list — 17 pages with a total of 61 charges that go back to 1984, which includes multiple sex assaults.
He’s also been convicted of theft, violating parole and abuse of a family member.
He was serving time for second-degree assault and failure to comply with sex offender registration requirements. Public safety officials said he updated the registry and was in compliance before being allowed to participate in the furlough program.
So once again, we’re asking prison officials why this keeps happening and whether some of these inmates really belong on the streets.
This latest escape comes just nine days after lawmakers grilled the Department of Public Safety about the rash of inmates who keep escaping while on the work furlough program.
The vice chair of the Senate public safety committee says the rules need to be stricter.
“We could (tighten the rules) if we feel it’s necessary,” said Sen. Will Espero. “At this stage, it could be a matter of looking at what the department first is doing internally.”
The furlough program has come under fire and one of the most vocal is Honolulu prosecutor Keith Kaneshiro.
“We don’t even know if they have jobs,” he said. “We’ve asked and they will not disclose it.”
Even Nolan Espinda, DPS director, admits the program doesn’t always work.
“The people in that program have the opportunity to go through all kinds of programming first, hopefully teach them the difference between right and wrong, good decisions, bad decisions, consequences for bad decisions, but it doesn’t always work out that way,” Espinda said.
Espero points out that most of the work furlough inmates follow the rules and are eventually released without committing any more crimes.
But, as Always Investigating uncovered, part of the problem could be at times the escapees don’t even get punished after they’re captured.
“That’s something we can look at legislatively too, what are the consequences,” Espero said.
Seyler next parole hearing is scheduled for September of this year and he faces an additional escape charge.
He is a community custody inmate in the work furlough program with pass privileges. Community custody is the lowest classification status.
Always Investigating looked into Seyler’s background and found his whereabouts were wrong on the state’s inmate status and victim notification website VINELink.com (Victim Information and Notification Everyday).
The site listed him as “in custody” at OCCC when he really was out of custody on work furlough. The listings of dozens of other inmates were also wrong.
The Department of Public Safety said its private vendor was backed up on inputting the latest information.
But after Always Investigating called the state about Seyler’s wrong information, it was immediately corrected.
