Canadian Prison Officials Play Beat the Clock With Possible Y2K Bugs

VANCOUVER, Canada —  Prison officials in the province of British Columbia went back in time to bring in the new year--they reset their computers to 1994 to save costly Year 2000 technical adjustments.

Sheldon Green, spokesman for B.C. Corrections, said Friday that computers that control cell locks and cameras at five prisons in the province were not Y2K compliant, so their clocks were reset to prevent them rolling into the new year.

January 1994 has the same day-date sequence as January 2000.

“It is an elegant and cheap [solution] . . . and we really like the cheap part,” Green said.

The prison clocks will have to be reset again at the end of February because unlike 2000, 1994 was not a leap year. The plan now calls for moving them ahead Feb. 28 to make them “think” they have entered Feb. 29, 1996, a leap year. “It buys us [some time] to come up with a solution,” Green said.

Authorities are not worried about escapes if their plan fails, because the system is designed to automatically lock cells if computers break down. Guards also can lock the doors manually.