Washington Loosened Supervision Two Ways and Left the Safety Plan for Later

What happens when a state loosens its watch over people it had good reason to watch, and says the safety plan is coming later?

Picture a neighborhood pool that removes its lifeguard in June and promises a safety plan by winter. The pool is open the whole time. The plan is still a promise.

Two bills from this session work that way. One changes the board that recommends who gets out of prison early. The other ends a program that supervises a higher-risk group in the disability system. Different subjects, same order of events: less supervision now, and the reassurance comes afterward.

Clemency means the governor can shorten a sentence or grant a pardon. A board reviews the requests and sends recommendations to the governor. HB1131 changed that board in three ways.

First, it doubled the board from five members to ten and started paying them. Second, it changed the test for recommending a shorter sentence. The question is now whether the sentence "no longer serves the interest of justice," which is a broad standard that leaves a lot to judgment. Third, it made clemency available "without regard to immigration status," and it asks the board to consider faster review when a deportation order is pending.

The bill has protections too. Two board seats go to representatives of crime victims. Sex offenses keep the "utmost scrutiny" rule. The board must report each year on who received clemency and any known repeat offenses. The board only recommends, and the governor makes the final call.

Then comes the funding. The Legislature did not pay for the bigger board. It added a clause, Section 12, that would cancel the whole act if funding was not provided by June 30, 2025. The governor vetoed that clause. So the larger, paid board went ahead without the funding condition the Legislature had attached.

The Community Protection Program is run by the Developmental Disabilities Administration inside the Department of Social and Health Services. It serves adults with developmental disabilities who are judged to be a current risk to others. To qualify, a person has a history of, or charges for, violent crimes, sexual offenses, or "predatory or opportunistic behavior." The program provides 24-hour supervision, housing help and therapy. The House bill report counts 324 people enrolled. HB1390 repeals the program. The Legislature says the goal is to let these clients get "less restrictive service options."

Here is the case for repeal, in the words of the people who made it. The program's rules can be strict. They include supervision that can mean line-of-sight watching, alarms on doors and windows, monitoring of what a person watches and reads, chaperones, and limits on where a person can live. Self-advocates and the state's developmental disabilities ombuds told lawmakers the program is coercive and hard to leave. One witness said that of about 400 participants, roughly 10 had ever been released. The ombuds office's 2021 report on the program is titled "No Way Out." The bill reports list no testimony against the bill. The bill also says it is "not intended to reduce the supportive services" these clients receive.

The sexually violent predator law is the other piece. Washington has a separate law for civilly committing sexually violent predators. Before HB1390, that law said the Community Protection Program could not be used as a court's "less restrictive alternative" to commitment, and could not be treated as a placement for a person released after a commitment petition. HB1390 deletes both sentences, because the program will no longer exist. It does not change who can be committed. So the commitment law stays in place, and its standard is narrow. A person qualifies only if they have been convicted of or charged with a crime of sexual violence, have a mental abnormality or personality disorder, and are more likely than not to commit predatory acts of sexual violence if not confined.

The program covered a wider group. Its eligibility also reached people with histories of violent, stalking or "opportunistic" behavior. Someone in the program for those reasons, or someone with a sexual-violence history who does not meet the mental abnormality and likelihood tests, is outside the commitment law. Once the program ends, the transition plan is the only thing the bill offers for them.

What the bill does not say is how the public stays safe once the supervision ends. That job goes to a transition plan. The department must develop and put the plan in place by December 31, 2026. The plan is not in the law, and it does not exist yet. The repeal takes effect January 1, 2027, whether the plan is ready or not.

Each bill loosens the state's hold on a group it had a specific reason to watch. Each one also puts the safeguard in a document that has not been written. For HB1131, that document is a future budget. For HB1390, it is the transition plan. The reduced supervision is here today, and the thing meant to make it safe is still ahead.

That makes two documents the ones to watch: the next budget and the transition plan. The bills have already passed. The safeguards have not.

Think back to the pool. Washington took the lifeguard off the chair and asked the neighbors to trust that the safety plan will arrive.

This is our read of the bill. We encourage you to read it yourself and reach your own conclusions. The sources are public and linked below.