Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Sentencing Reform topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Researcher: Washington’s sentencing grid pushed power outward as offender scores climbed
Summary
Dr. Lauren Knoth Petersen told the Supreme Court symposium that Washington’s Sentencing Reform Act and later legislative changes shifted discretion away from judges toward prosecutors and other actors, contributing to a rise in average criminal‑history scores and longer sentences; she urged better state‑specific data and impact analyses.
At a Washington Supreme Court symposium, Dr. Lauren Knoth Petersen, a senior research scientist at the Public Safety Policy and Research Center, told the court that the Sentencing Reform Act of 1981 reshaped who controls sentence outcomes and that subsequent legislative changes have tended to push outcomes toward longer terms.
Petersen laid out the SRA’s original goals — proportionality, public protection, rehabilitation and frugality — and described how the adoption of a determinate sentencing grid created a structure of rows (offense seriousness) and columns (criminal‑history score) that now governs most felony sentences. "The grid provided the structure that really fundamentally changed prosecutorial discretion," Petersen said, arguing that charging decisions now determine grid placement and therefore sentence ranges.
She described discretion as a hydraulic system: when the law constrains judges, decision‑making power can move to prosecutors, the legislature and administrative actors. "Discretion wasn't eliminated; it was moved," Petersen said, summarizing her "hydraulic displacement" framing. She said legislative multipliers and enhancements, mandatory minimums and other incremental statutory changes have increased the legislature's and prosecutors' influence over final outcomes.
Petersen offered specific data to illustrate the effect: she told the court that the average felony criminal‑history score at initial SRA implementation was about 1.5 and had risen to roughly 4.5 by 2024, shifting the average placement on the grid to the right and increasing typical sentence lengths. She also referenced a Council of State Governments analysis showing a weaker than expected relationship between offender score and measured recidivism in Washington — a finding she said undermines the score's stated purpose as a risk predictor.
Petersen critiqued multipliers, noting they can make offender scores harder to calculate accurately and less predictive of individual risk. "It can even be the case that individuals with a higher score have fewer actual prior convictions," she said, pointing to persistent errors in judgment‑and‑sentence forms and Department of Corrections calculations.
In questions from the bench, a justice asked whether Petersen had disaggregated her offender‑score trends by race. Petersen replied that racial disproportionality in criminal‑history scores exists and that she would provide disaggregated figures to the court. She also described operational hurdles to research in Washington: decentralized court records, separate databases (AOC for initial charges; CFC for judgment‑and‑sentence data) and inconsistent local recording practices that complicate statewide analysis.
Petersen urged the court and policymakers to invest in Washington‑specific research, to require and fund better data collection and to use racial and ethnic impact statements or other anticipatory analysis before adopting new statutory enhancements. "We need more and better data," she said, adding that many Washington polices have not been studied and that unanticipated consequences are common when reforms are implemented without evaluation.
Petersen closed by urging a redefinition of success beyond simple recidivism metrics and by recommending research‑based design (distance‑based markers of desistance, redemption benchmarks, reduced washout periods and time‑weighted criminal‑history calculations) to reduce cumulative disadvantage.
