Pierce County Has Issues With WA DOC Releases
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.
County-State Issues, WA Chelan County, WA Pierce County, WA Snohomish County, Washington, Work Release