Who's really to blame in the prison sentencing scandal?

We've been following the Veterans Administration scandal and written about it here a couple of times, but a new controversy that seems to have common components hits closer to home.

Some Veterans Administration officials are accused of gaming the system, for example, by collecting bonuses for improving service to veterans by instructing lower level employees to keep appointment lists off the books to make waiting times look much better than they actually were.

Now the Omaha World-Herald reported on internal emails that seem to show a similar pattern by the Nebraska Department of Correctional Services, choosing to deal with prison overcrowding by ignoring two Nebraska Supreme Court rulings that it needed to change the way it calculated prison sentences.

Prison officials were not requiring inmates to serve their mandatory minimum sentences before earning "good time," which basically cut their sentences in half.

A retired records manager sent emails recommending the department stick with the erroneous calculation technique, since recalculating hundreds of sentences would be "a real mess."

That happened just as predicted, however, affecting 600 some prisoners. Most were still in prison and just had their sentences extended, but dozens were already out and had to be tracked down.

The department of corrections has hired a Lincoln law firm to investigate the issue, but there are calls for the governor to call a special session before a number of term-limited lawmakers leave office.

To be sure, bureaucrats in the Veterans Administration and Department of Corrections deserve their share of the blame. We depend on officials at all levels to have the honesty and personal integrity to do the right thing and let the chips fall where they may.

But it's up to Congress and the Legislature to give those officials the tools they need -- usually, but not always, money -- to implement the laws the legislative branch enacts.

It's up to that branch to give the bureaucrats a job that can actually be accomplished with the funding and direction provided.

Short of that, lower-level officials are pressured into finding ways to go along to get along.

In too many cases, the Department of Corrections is asked to deal with prisoners sent to it more for political goals -- laws enacted to make elected officials appear tough on crime and drugs -- rather than to serve real justice.