The Senate Human Services Committee heard a one‑hour work session Tuesday from leaders of the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC), including incoming secretary Tim Lang, who outlined the agency’s priorities for the coming biennium and described staffing and health‑care challenges affecting prisons, reentry and community supervision.

"Our mission is to provide people opportunities to positively change their lives," Lang told the committee as he described the department’s focus on safe, humane facilities and successful transitions back to the community. Deputy Secretary Sean Murphy and assistant secretaries Danielle Armbruster (reentry) and Mac Peavey (community corrections) joined Lang for the presentation.

Committee members were presented with operational data, staffing pressures and several agency legislative requests aimed at addressing recruitment, overtime and service delivery.

Why it matters
DOC leaders said their top near‑term challenge is a staffing shortfall that has driven unprecedented overtime levels and strained facility operations. Murphy said the system has an "operational capacity of 15,500 beds and a population in our 11 prisons at 13,000 individuals," and described mandatory overtime and relief‑staff shortfalls as a major driver of stress on staff and safety concerns.

Details presented to the committee
- Custody staffing and overtime: Murphy said DOC logged about 75,000 hours of mandatory overtime in 2024, with roughly 900,000 voluntary overtime hours and about 1,000,000 total overtime hours. The department told the committee its prior relief staffing formula had not kept pace with modern absence patterns and training needs.
- Health services and electronic health records (EHR): Murphy said DOC provides medical, behavioral health and dental care under DOC standards and is working on EHR implementation in coordination with a statewide effort (HC Max). Lang said full implementation is expected to take "a few years" and depends on funding and sequencing.
- Addiction and opioid treatment: DOC leaders said an estimated 25% of the incarcerated population has an opioid‑use disorder diagnosis while only about 10% currently receive medication for treatment under existing capacity; the governor’s budget requests expansion of medication‑based treatment.
- Aging population and specialty care: The department said the incarcerated population is aging, increasing demand for specialty care and transport resources; DOC reported a 28% increase in claims over the last two biennia.
- Reentry 2030 and Medicaid: Armbruster described Washington joining the national Reentry 2030 initiative and said the state aims for three goals: zero returns to homelessness, 40% post‑release employment, and 100% enrollment in Medicaid within 90 days pre‑release through an 1115 waiver partnership.
- Partial confinement and supervision reforms: DOC briefed committee members on agency request bills including supervision compliance credits (House Bill 1119) and alignment of partial confinement programs.

Questions from senators covered prison culture, civic engagement by incarcerated people, the SAGE medical unit move to Airway Heights, and constraints on local jail capacity for housing community‑custody violators.

Next steps and legislative asks
DOC said it will press several budget and policy items this session, including funding to address custody relief staffing, electronic health records, opioid treatment expansion, resentencing and virtual‑hearing staff, and conversion or reopening of reentry centers to state operation. Lang and DOC staff said they will continue to work with the Legislature on those proposals.

Ending
The committee closed the work session and moved on to two bill hearings scheduled later in the meeting.