Morgan's anger well-founded

Saskatchewan's justice minister says errors that resulted in prisoners being released prematurely from jails in this province are not acceptable.
But what really seems to have Don Morgan's back up even more than the mistakes is the fact that neither he nor the public had been made aware of the incidents until several days later. In fact, Morgan learned of the latest error three days after it was discovered. Even worse, he learned about it from someone he sat beside at a dinner, not from someone in his ministry.
The errors themselves are terrible. The fact the public was not made aware of the fact these prisoners were not where society assumed they were is worse. But if you are the justice minister and you are learning this information from someone over supper, that is the ultimate slap in the face.
Morgan has every right to be annoyed. And he should take steps to get his department under tighter control. Suspending a member of the team with pay doesn't really send a strong message to the public - it's time off work, with pay. What's the penalty?
On the weekend, Morgan and others put together an "interim protocol" for when such things happen - and it has happened on many other occasions for many years now. But it seems like it's a little late. The minister has already been embarrassed and the public already worries about what else we aren't being told that we should be told.
Unfortunately, it will take some time to rebuild the justice department's credibility after these recent mistakes. The public is more willing to accept that mistakes happen if every effort is made to keep ussafe by letting us know the situation, rather than to learn about it long after it happened and that someone chose to keep us in the dark.