SPOKANE, Wash. — Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell, Spokane County Sheriff John Knowles, and Chief of Spokane Police Department Craig Meidl testified at the Senate for Human Services Committee hearing in support of Senate Bill (SB) 5226, which aims to refocus the Department of Corrections on public safety.
SB 5226 keeps public safety at the forefront by implementing and prioritizing open active warrants to individuals who have violated their supervision.
"This bill as you have indicated Chair Wilson purports to kind of re-emphasize and reprioritize the Department of Corrections in terms of going not just the happenstance way they happened to be stopped, but to actually seek those that are community custody violators," Haskell said. "When we restructure the community custody, it's very important that the that the custody be meaningful, and that change be real."
"As the Sheriff of Spokane County, I can say that if we have the Department of Corrections employees out looking for these individuals and holding them accountable. "I know that it will reduce the number of people that we come into contact with who are committing new crimes, who happen to have an act of DOC warrant when they're arrested," Nowles said. "And that does happen all too frequently."
Chief Meidl said the data over the last four years from the DOC shows offenders are hitting the streets faster than in years past.
"One of the things we noticed is that if we go back to 2018 and look at incarceration numbers in the state of Washington, they were just above 18,000," Meidl said.
"If you fast forward to December of 2022, the last data that DOC has posted on incarceration numbers, those are at 14,700."
While testifying, Chief Meidl said he appreciates the workers of the DOC and their workload prevents them from keeping up on the matter.
"I do want to make a pitch for the good men and women of the Department of Corrections," he said. "They have heavy caseload loads, they have a lot of folks that they try to follow up on. Some of the issues that we're seeing is that property crimes are dropping to the bottom of the list because of the Amaze caseload."
Meidl said an officer was stalked and later shot by two offenders last June. One of them was on DOC supervision and was reportedly filming himself as he tried to attack police officers, according to Meidl.
"We're not seeing that focus on going after those who violate, who have a contract with the state. And I just encourage us to be more proactive and tracking them down because we do know that they're violating there just needs to be that follow-up to make sure that they are being held accountable under this program," Chief Meidl said.
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