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Pierce County Has Issues With WA DOC Releases

December 1st, 2008
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Pierce County is likely to remain a point of return for state prison inmates for years to come because Washington State prison officials are making such slow progress on starting work-release programs in other communities.

The Legislature last year authorized the state Department of Corrections to start expanding its work-release program by finding sites for 120 additional inmates by mid-2009. That’s the first step of an agency plan to nearly double the number of inmates in work release from 670 today to 1,320 by 2016. About 20 percent of inmates spend the final three months of their prison sentences in work release, where they’re required to find jobs and pay rent to the state as they make their transition to full release into the community. But prison officials have not built or leased any new work-release centers and are not likely to do so over the next seven months, said DOC regional administrator Anne Fiala.  Moreover, the state now faces a $5 billion budget deficit, which means the work-release expansion plan may come to a halt. Lawmakers will be looking to cut spending, not add to it, as they write a budget for the 2009-11 budget cycle.

Meanwhile, Pierce County, which is home to three work-release centers that house as many as 125 inmates, will continue to “host” inmates who committed crimes in other counties but are sent there to get jobs and transition into the community … State officials continue to avoid trying to put a work-release center in Snohomish County, despite the fact that an advisory committee said in January that Snohomish was the county most in need of such a facility. There are no work-release centers in Snohomish County and have not been since 1982, when an inmate escaped from an Everett work-release center and killed two women and a girl. Local officials have fended off previous state efforts to site a facility in Everett or nearby communities.

The Legislature instructed the Department of Corrections to spread out work-release facilities so no single county would bear more than its fair share. [Thurston County Prosecutor Ed] Horne said the longer it takes for Snohomish County to get a work-release center, the longer Pierce County will get more than its share.   “I’m disappointed because it’s so unfair for us,” Horne said.

There is plenty more on this story at the Tacoma News Tribune.

vericatrajkova County-State Issues, WA Chelan County, WA Pierce County, WA Snohomish County, Washington, Work Release

Regional Jail Plan Blooms

November 24th, 2008
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The coalition of counties wanting to build a new regional jail in Central Washington has grown to seven and wants money for a detailed study of the idea.

Franklin County has now joined Douglas, Chelan, Okanogan, Grant, Kittitas and Adams in talking about jointly building a facility to house inmates.  Officials from the counties met last Thursday in Yakima during the Washington State Association of Counties meeting. Officials from several Western Washington counties, including Whatcom, Skagit and Snohomish, also attended the meeting and expressed interest in building regional jails in their own areas, said Douglas County Commissioner Ken Stanton.

Under current state law, jails can only be owned and operated by a city or county. However, the coalition of Eastern Washington counties will present a bill in the upcoming legislative session to change the law and allow private entities to run jails, Stanton said. He said the seven counties are interested in paying for construction of the jail and then paying a private operator to run it. The state granted a similar law change several years ago to allow Martin Hall, a juvenile detention facility near Spokane in which Douglas County youth are housed, to be built by nine counties and run by a private entity. RiverCom, the 911 emergency call center in Wenatchee, is also operated by a private entity and funded by multiple government agencies. Sen. Linda Evans Parlette, R-Wenatchee, has agreed to sponsor the bill in the Senate, and Rep. Mike Armstrong, R-Wenatchee, will lead the effort in the House, Stanton said.

Douglas County raised the idea of building the regional jail earlier this year after determining that it would be too costly to build one on their own. The commissioners have said they don’t believe the 380-bed jail in Wenatchee will be big enough for Chelan and Douglas counties and all the cities in those counties in the future, and they don’t want to invest in expanding the aging facility.  The Association of Counties has asked for $250,000 from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s capital budget to do a feasibility study on building the regional jail, Stanton said. “The first major step is to see if it’s viable,” he said. “We need to find out how much it will cost overall and how much it will cost each of the counties.”   The study will not look at a possible location for the facility. That decision would be made after the study is done, Stanton said.

vericatrajkova Regional Jails, WA Adams County, WA Chelan County, WA Clark County, WA Douglas County, WA Franklin County, WA Grant County, WA Kittitas County, WA Okanogan County