PORT ANGELES — Its backers say the Criminal Reinvestment Initiative could cut property crime by 15 percent, slice prison construction by $291 million and add $90 million for police, community corrections and victims.
Yet Mark Nichols hasn’t joined the parade of county prosecutors who are backing the bill.
His reason is in the numbers, Clallam County’s prosecuting attorney told the Port Angeles Business Association at its weekly meeting Tuesday.
Although the initiative promotes programs to meet its goals by 2021, Nichols said, it provides no revenue for them.
“Where the money’s coming from? No one knows,” he said.
The initiative cites Washington’s ranking as No. 1 among states both in property crimes and in severity of sentences for property offenders. It proposes changing how the state punishes them.
The changes would make fewer offenders eligible for state prison terms and more of them liable to be sent to county jails or to be placed on supervision programs that could include behavioral and drug abuse treatment.
The state pays for prisoners. Counties pay for jail inmates.
“Under justice reinvestment,” Nichols said, “we might not have the capacity to house them in the local jail.”
Washington state currently has no such programs for property offenders.
The initiative, endorsed by state 24th District Sen. Jim Hargrove, D-Hoquiam, is on a rapid legislative track, Nichols told his two-dozen listeners at Joshua’s Restaurant, 113 Delguzzi Drive.
The state association of 39 elected prosecutors also supports it.
But few of the prosecutors, Nichols said, consulted with law enforcement officers in their jurisdictions.
Officers mostly oppose the initiative, he added.
Likewise, when he asked state Department of Corrections officials what “enhanced supervision” of offenders means, Nichols said he was told, “We have no idea of what that would entail.”
The measure has passed the state Senate, and on Monday, the state House of Representatives appropriations committee passed a version of it.
Nichols said that Gov. Jay Inslee supports it as one way to channel state tax dollars away from costly prison programs and into court-mandated funding for safe fish passages and for basic education.
“The pace at which things are proceeding leads me to believe there are some changes that are going to be coming down the pike,” Nichols said.
The prosecutor said he didn’t oppose altering the sentencing system or diverting offenders from imprisonment, which he called “very expensive” and “a very high-liability proposition”
Harsher penalties aren’t an answer either, he said.
“We don’t behead or cane people in the United States. That’s simply not on the menu. So the question arises, what else are we going to do?”
And Nichols decried “an inextricably entwined nexus between drug offense and property offense,” adding that he saw merit in some reformers’ proposals that the two crimes be addressed as one.
But will the initiative pay more community corrections officers to make sure released offenders are following their treatment programs, attending school or going to jobs?
Nichols said he didn’t know.
“I hope that what’s not going to happen is that the state budget is going to be balanced at the cost of public safety,” he said.
Nichols urged his audience to question legislators, and he offered to carry their concerns to 24th District representatives and relevant state agencies.
“This is a difficult discussion to have,” he said, “but the most irresponsible thing would be not to have it.”
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Reporter James Casey can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5074, or at jcasey@peninsuladailynews.com.
