DOC PUBLICLY ADMITS WFSE/AFSCME COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS WERE RIGHT ABOUT 'FALSE POSITIVE' ASSESSMENTS THAT MAY MISCLASSIFY DANGEROUS FELONS

The state's Corrections secretary told a House committee Wednesday night that the assessment tool on which Gov. Chris Gregoire bases her proposed cuts to community supervision did have errors.

That bolstered Federation Community Corrections members' claims that the assessment tool leads to "false positives" where higher risk offenders actually score lower and would then be bumped off supervision under Gregoire's plan.

The admission came during a hearing before the House General Government Appropriations Committee.

"The new assessment tool used to classify offenders is determined by prior conviction," said Bill Copland, a Community Corrections specialist in Kennewick and president of Local 1253. "The tool does not account for plea-bargaining. It rates sex offenders lower and it does not account for mental illness....

"The result is that some moderate risk offenders should actually be in the high-risk category."

When pressed by committee Chair Rep. Jeannie Darneille, DOC Secretary Eldon Vail admitted the assessment tool started in August 2008 had errors.

Vail explained the Washington State Institute for Public Policy had developed the tool.

Immediately, Federation Community Corrections members raised red flags.

"They said it strong enough and often enough that we went back to the Washington State Institute for Public Policy and we said would you look at this and they did and they discovered that they had made an error in the construction of the program that we had applied, so after about 60 days of using the first tool, we discovered that and we fixed it and now we're back running with the new one," Vail said.

Vail said in his opinion the "science of it" is "pretty solid and pretty sound."

But the risk of the built-in errors is cause for grave concern, Copland told the committee.

"It flies in the face of common sense to risk the safety of the community on a tool that is not fully implemented and has not been field validated," Copland said. "And it is wrong and potentially tragic to have the governor's budget cuts based on a classification system that eliminates supervision of offenders who very well may need it."

The overall proposed cuts to DOC community supervision would "gut our efficiency and effectiveness," said Cindy McHie, a Community Corrections officer 3 in Walla Walla and president of Local 396.

"It would be hard to accomplish our department's mission to 'promote public safety, community protection, and public understanding,'" McHie said.

The cuts would also eliminate up to 400 jobs, she said.

"The governor's proposal does hit community safety hard," McHie said. "We urge you to reject her cuts but we'd be willing to work with you on other sensible solutions to keep community supervision effective and a key part of our plan for safer communities."