Brief Description: Revising reporting requirements for criminal history record information.

Sponsors: Senators Brandland, Kohl-Welles, McAuliffe, Hargrove, Rockefeller, Schmidt, Rasmussen, Stevens, Delvin and Roach.

Senate Committee on Human Services & Corrections
House Committee on Criminal Justice & Corrections

Background: A Joint Task Force on Criminal Background Check Processes was created by the 2004 legislative session. The task force reported to the Legislature in January 2005, making several recommendations for improvements to the law and requesting the term of the task force be extended in order to consider matters that were raised at the 2004 meetings but required further analysis and discussion. The task force was extended to December 2005 per SHB 1681.

In 2005, the Legislature passed SSB 5899, which eliminated certain provisions requiring that civil and administrative decisions be sent to the Washington State Patrol (WSP). The task force had discovered that, as a practical matter, the decisions were not being forwarded to WSP or could not be integrated into WSP's criminal history records because they did not contain fingerprint records.

Summary: Technical corrections to statutory language are made consistent with legislation that passed the Legislature last year. Dependency record information and protection proceeding record information are no longer required to be sent to WSP, and references to this information are eliminated, accordingly.

Votes on Final Passage:

Senate      43   0
House      98   0

Effective: June 7, 2006