HOUSE BILL REPORT

SHB 1458

BYHouse Committee on Health Care (originally sponsored by Representatives Grant, Brooks, Braddock and Sprenkle; by request of Department of Corrections)

Regarding corrections and the intrastate compact.

House Committe on Health Care

Majority Report:  The substitute bill be substituted therefor and the substitute bill do pass.  (8)

      Signed by Representatives Braddock, Chair; Brooks, Ranking Republican Member; Cantwell, Chandler, Morris, Prentice, Sommers and Wolfe.

House Staff:Antonio Sanchez (786-7383)

AS PASSED HOUSE MARCH 6, 1989

BACKGROUND:

Current law allows the Department of Corrections (DOC) to accept offenders sentenced to felony terms of less than one year when it operates a "regional jail camp."  In 1988, DOC declared the McNeil Island Corrections Center Annex (MICC) to be such a jail camp, and began to accept county inmates pursuant to the "Washington Intrastate Corrections Compact."

The intrastate compact is presently in place in three counties.  Currently DOC has 26 county inmates incarcerated in the MICC Annex.  Clark County has signed the compact and expects to transfer inmates before the end of January.  In addition, the Department has accepted one medical transfer, from King County to the inpatient unit at the Washington State Reformatory and will consider others on a case-by-case basis from any county willing to be a signatory to the compact.

Counties are billed $30 per day, and may "credit" against obligations owed to the county by DOC.  The crediting process is a cumbersome and complicated process involving the transfer of funds between the state, county, and the Department.

SUMMARY:

Enacts the intrastate compact into statute, and allows the state and a county, by mutual agreement, to exchange offenders and for one to "owe" the other even if the "repayment" was in a different fiscal year.

Sections 1 through 5 take the major provisions of the compact created in 1988 and enact them into law.  The sections are permissive by allowing counties to enter into this compact for the exchange of prisoners with the Department of Corrections (DOC), or with each other, in a standardized way and at the common rate established by the Office of Financial Management (presently $30 per day).

Section 6 would allow the state and a county, by mutual agreement, to exchange offenders and for one to "owe" the other, even if the "repayment" was in a different fiscal year.

Fiscal Note:      No Impact.

House Committee ‑ Testified For:    Bruce Kuennen, Department of Corrections.

House Committee - Testified Against:      None Presented.

House Committee - Testimony For:    Reduces the accounting difficulties that occur between different fiscal years.  Promotes the adequate and appropriate housing of non-felon inmates in over crowded county jails.

House Committee - Testimony Against:      None Presented.