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Editorial page editor Patrick O’Callahan oversees the online and printed opinion sections of The News Tribune. He came to The News Tribune in 1987 and has worked at Washington newspapers since 1979. E-mail him at patrick.ocallahan@thenewstribune.com
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Richard Davis’ column on state politics frequently runs in the print edition of The News Tribune. He was president of the Washington Research Council, a statewide think tank, from 1986 through 2006. Currently, as a principal with The Simeon Partnership, Inc. he coordinates the activities of the Washington Alliance for a Competitive Economy, a business coalition founded by the Research Council, the Association of Washington Business and the Washington Roundtable.
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The subject of our editorial today – outgoing Pierce County Prosecutor Gerry Horne – takes issue with some of the numbers cited.
I wrote, "Today, an estimated 150 to 200 offenders are not being released to Pierce County each year who in earlier years would have been." I picked up those numbers from a Viewpoint by state Sen. Mike Carrell, who was instrumental in getting "fair share" legislation passed in 2007. He cited the prosecutor's office as his source.
Horne argues that the impact is even greater. And he wrote: "I guess we'll have to talk with Sen. Carrell to track down what I believe to be misleading stats."
Here's Horne's take on the numbers:
You indicate that "an estimated 150 to 200 offenders are not being released to Pierce County each year who in earlier years would have been."
Those stats grossly minimize the numbers of prison convicts who were actually sent to Pierce County every year during a 25-year period. Actually, 900 to 1,000 prison convicts had been sent to Pierce County each year to attend state work release programs alone!Our study (the Fitzer Report, Feb 2007) documented that 2 out of 3 convicts who had been sent to local work release facilities were from other counties.
Via a (public disclosure) demand, my office eventually received the names of 5,421 convicts who had been sent to work release/prerelease facilities in Pierce County during a consecutive period of 5 years and 10 months. (Some of the names were repeated, as convicts were often returned to prison for violations or new crimes and then returned to Tacoma/Lakewood work-release facilities.) Hence, over 900 state prison convicts had been routed through the 273 work release beds in our county each year.
DOC does not consider those convicts to have been "released" because they were still serving their prison sentences while in work release. The purpose of work release was to reintegrate offenders into the community. Therefore, the thousands of state convicts sent to work release were wandering about our Tacoma/Lakewood streets under the guise of looking for employment or simply adjusting to the community via excursions to malls or libraries, etc.
