Thurston County prosecutors report rise in Tumwater referrals, warn victim-advocacy funding has fallen 50%

Thurston County Prosecuting Attorney John Tunheim told the Tumwater Public Health and Safety Committee on Feb. 11 that the county has seen an uptick in referrals and charged cases from Tumwater in 2024, with the largest increases in non‑domestic violence referrals and higher numbers of charged domestic‑violence cases.

Tunheim said the office is now fully staffed in district court for lawyers after a multiyear hiring push, partly by recruiting third‑year law students into supervised “rule 9” positions and then offering them jobs contingent on bar passage. But he warned the committee the office has reduced victim‑advocacy capacity: “Our funding dropped about half, by about 50% for our victim advocacy program,” he said, attributing the loss to a 2023 legislative change that made the victim penalty assessment optional and to insufficient state replacement funding.

The funding shortfall prompted the office to leave two victim‑advocate positions unfilled pending the outcome of the current legislative session, Tunheim said. He thanked Representative Lauren Davis for supporting requests to restore funding and said he had provided her with the office’s case numbers to make the case with colleagues.

Deputy prosecutor Christy Peters described how the office is prioritizing remaining advocacy resources: advocates now screen cases and provide support for trials, defense interviews or other matters with heightened victim needs, rather than having an advocate present for every arraignment. “It’s not off the table,” Peters said. “We simply don’t have an advocate in court every single day for arraignment purposes.”

Tunheim and Peters outlined other operational changes. The office has expanded diversion programs for people with substance‑use or behavioral health needs; Peters said preliminary recidivism data for diverted cases indicate better outcomes for people who maintain regular contact with diversion officers. Tunheim said the office will accept possession cases for the LEAD program where appropriate and that diversion referrals are being used as an alternative to traditional prosecution.

The office is also preparing a public‑facing data dashboard, hosted by Measures for Justice’s Commons platform, that Tunheim said will launch in April with felony data (Tumwater felony data will be included). He said misdemeanor data will be phased in later because county misdemeanor records are spread across multiple municipal systems.

On domestic violence responses, Tunheim said the county has redeployed prosecutorial resources and now has two domestic‑violence attorneys covering the Tumwater calendar in district court; those prosecutors are embedded with superior‑court domestic‑violence specialists and victim advocates to improve handling of complex cases.

Tunheim said the State Prosecutors Association is commissioning a Washington‑specific workload study to set prosecutor caseload standards in light of greater per‑case work from video and body‑worn camera evidence. “It adds a lot more work per case,” he said, noting body cam and dashboard video lengthen review and discovery time.

Peters and Tunheim described a Domestic Violence High Risk Team (DVHRT) project currently managed by Safe Place that aims to prioritize high‑risk cases using standardized danger assessment tools. Peters said the county has obtained a three‑year grant through the Office of Crime Victim Advocacy in the Washington State Department of Commerce to fund the county’s first dedicated domestic‑violence investigator, which the office hopes will help run the DVHRT and reduce investigative burdens on law enforcement.

Tunheim said law enforcement and prosecutors are working on a records‑management integration project that could allow electronic referrals from police record systems into the prosecutor’s system and help connect calls‑for‑service data to prosecution outcomes.

Committee members asked for follow‑up data comparing police calls for service, referrals and prosecution outcomes. Acting Chief Jay Mason and Tunheim acknowledged that linking those datasets is complex but said the dashboard and the record‑management initiative could improve transparency in coming months.

The presentation did not include a formal motion or vote; committee members thanked the prosecutors for the update and asked staff to return with dashboards and further data when available.