The Washington Department of Corrections, in its never ending battle to reduce the cost of housing people in Washington prisons has dreamed up another approach: don’t send folks to prison at all! This involves SB 6327, which has passed out of the Senate Human Services and Corrections committee. This misguided bill removes the restriction on violent offenders not being eligible for a POSA (parenting sentencing alternative).

POSA is one of the sentencing alternatives available to a defendant upon a felony conviction. It joins SOSA (sex offender sentencing alternative), DOSA (drug offender sentencing alternative) as a way for an offender to avoid the consequences for misconduct. It used to be that POSA was not available if a person has committed a violent felony. This proposed law removes that restriction.

A violent offense includes: any felony defined under any law as a class A felony or an attempt to commit a class A felony; manslaughter in the first degree; manslaughter in the second degree; indecent liberties if committed by forcible compulsion; kidnapping in the second degree; arson in the second degree; assault in the second degree; assault of a child in the second degree; extortion in the first degree; robbery in the second degree; drive-by shooting; vehicular assault or homicide, under certain circumstances; etc.

The entire POSA sentencing alternative is based on the idea that persons with children should not be faced with prison for the things they have done, but allowed to remain in the community because the children need them. Supposedly the children would be better off by having dad or mom at home even if they were committing felonies at home.

In my thinking, I am not sure a child benefits from putting this offenderback into the home when they finally earn a prison sentence (in some cases for assaulting the child). It should be noted that many of these violent offenders have multiple priors (which is why they are finally beingsentenced to prison in the first place). Seems to me that the children might be better off without their example or it might be good for them to learn that doing wrong things means you go to prison.

Like Doctor Phil says: What are you (the folks in Olympia) thinking? (By the way, the Prosecutor’s Association opposes this bill.) Lets hope it does not pass into law, but who knows what the west side voters will do?