Jailers Who Released Inmate by Mistake May Be Disciplined : Corrections: Ventura County officials are examining procedures after the second such walkaway in a year. Escapee called authorities from North Hollywood.

County corrections officials announced Tuesday they are examining jail procedures and contemplating disciplinary action against jail deputies after an inmate was mistakenly released from jail this week.

It was the second time in 12 months an inmate has walked away from custody because of employee error.

“We have a number of checks and balances in place to prevent errant releases,” said Cmdr. Mark Ball, who oversees the pre-sentence facility at the County Government Center. “But we need to find out why they failed, what needs to be changed, and what others need to be put in place.”

The inmate was recaptured Tuesday after calling authorities from his mother’s North Hollywood home to turn himself in.

The inmate, Ruben M. Sifuentes, was arrested during a traffic stop Sunday, Ball said. Authorities discovered Sifuentes was driving without a license and had an outstanding warrant in North Hollywood for failing to appear in court on a previous traffic violation.

Deputies from the jail were preparing to transfer Sifuentes to Los Angeles County Jail when he somehow mixed in with a group of inmates about to be released, authorities said.

Sifuentes was dressed in street clothes at the time, which is standard procedure for an inmate about to be transferred, said Eric Nishimoto, spokesman for the Sheriff’s Department.

Authorities declined to comment on how the mix-up occurred, but acknowledged the mistake was the result of employee error, Nishimoto said. At least two deputies are expected to be disciplined for the blunder, authorities said.

Detectives called Sifuentes’ mother in North Hollywood on Monday, but he had not yet been in contact with her. He arrived at her house by Tuesday morning, however, and later called authorities to turn himself in, Nishimoto said.

Sifuentes, who served 60 days in jail on a 1995 burglary conviction in Los Angeles, will very likely face a charge of escape, a felony that carries up to a year in jail, Ball said.

Sifuentes’ release comes several months after another inmate was mistakenly released. In that incident, two men with the same name but different birth dates were in custody at the same time. A paperwork error allowed the wrong inmate to go home, Ball said.

That inmate, who authorities said was jailed in connection with a nonviolent offense, was recaptured hours later. Because of that mistake, all jail supervisors are now required to review an inmate’s paperwork and personally approve the release, Ball said.

“Each time this has ever happened in our history, everything has been reviewed and we’ve been able to fix any problems,” Ball said. “Even with human errors, that’s fixable. We can make it even more difficult to get out on human error.”

Authorities estimate about 250 inmates a day are transferred or released from County Jail and about 30,000 bookings come into the jail each year.

Despite the high volume of inmates, escapees from the lock-down facilities are rare, authorities said. Inmates more commonly walk away from work crew details. Two inmates have left such details this year.

Michael Sugden left a work crew at Camarillo Airport on July 19 but was recaptured a few days later. Ten days after that incident, Ronald Franklin walked off a work crew at the Ojai community center. He was rearrested the same day.

A bigger problem with erroneous releases exists in neighboring Los Angeles County, where six homicide suspects have been mistakenly freed since 1995, including one double-murder suspect accidentally released in March. Three of the inmates remain at large.