OLYMPIA – Snohomish County made the list Monday of places where the state wants to begin allowing convicted criminals to work and live while they finish their sentences.
The state Department of Corrections identified Snohomish and nine other counties that lack work release programs against the number of people who are convicted of crimes in those communities.
Whether corrections officials actually try to start a program in Snohomish County – where none exists today – won’t be known for months and might not happen for years, officials said.
The list “is definitely the first step in how everybody in the state can share the work that needs to be done,” said David Jansen, the department’s capital programs administrator.
In the next few months, an advisory committee will examine the agency’s recommendations and set a priority list for new work release programs.
Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon greeted Monday’s announcement with a warning.
“There’s a lot of work the state needs to do before this policy is implemented in this county,” he said.
A chief concern is whether the state can protect the public by hiring enough people to adequately supervise inmates brought into the county.
The state agency faces a shortage in corrections officers; it only managed to hire seven in an intensive recruiting campaign conducted since January.
Without confidence “the necessary safeguards are in place … no community in Washington will step forward to participate,” Reardon said.
Monday’s list is a result of a new state law to add work release programs in the next three years and spread them around the state.
Work release programs allow offenders who are considered low risk to spend the final six months of their prison term in partial confinement in halfway houses run by private contractors.
Community corrections officers continue to supervise them to ensure they abide by all the terms of their release. The Department of Corrections operates a total of 670 beds in 15 facilities in 10 counties including four in King County, three in Pierce County and two in Spokane County.
Legislators earmarked $17 million to add another 120 beds in the next two years, Jansen said. Within a decade, the department hopes it can add 600 work release beds statewide, bringing the total to 1,270.
In drawing up the list and trying to distribute former offenders equally, corrections officials charted the number of convicted criminals under community supervision, or parole, in each county. It also tallied the number of persons convicted by county.
It then compared those numbers with the number of work-release beds in a county.
Snohomish County is the state’s largest without a state-operated work-release program, making its selection Monday expected.
Other counties identified Monday include the regions of Chelan, Douglas and Kittitas; Clark and Skamania; Grays Harbor and Mason and Lewis.
The state has not had much luck getting one started in Snohomish County.
From 1991 to 1998, state officials in concert with a community advisory group searched for a site and came up empty. At the time, Corrections Secretary Joseph Lehman cited opposition from residents and politicians as the reason.
A high profile murder stirred the public outcry at the time.
Charles Rodman Campbell was executed in 1994 for killing two women, Renae Wicklund and Barbara Hendrickson, and Wicklund’s 8-year-old daughter in 1982 near Clearview. Campbell committed the crimes while on work release.
Reporter Jerry Cornfield: 360-352-8623 or jcornfield@heraldnet.com.
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