House Bill 1139 (H-0353.1), filed for the 2025 regular session and referred to the Committee on Community Safety, amends existing Washington law rather than creating an entirely new criminal statute. It expands arrest authority in RCW 10.31.100 by requiring a police officer to arrest and take into custody a person when there is probable cause they unlawfully possessed a firearm in violation of RCW 9.41.040(1) or (2), authorizes arrest for illegal possession of a firearm or dangerous weapon on school premises (with those terms referenced to existing RCW definitions), and adds a mandatory arrest/holding rule for certain DUI/physical-control offenses when the officer knows of specified prior offenses or pending charges. The bill also amends the sentencing chapter (RCW 9.94A.030 and related sections) by revising and adding many statutory definitions used throughout the chapter (for example: board; department collection duties for legal financial obligations, including a duty to deliver payments daily to the superior court clerk; electronic monitoring and home detention definitions including victim-notification capability; community protection zone set at 880 feet from school grounds; and lists of “most serious,” “serious violent,” “sex,” “violent,” and other offense categories). It changes offender score and prior-conviction scoring rules in RCW 9.94A.525 by specifying how anticipatory offenses are scored, how multiple priors and concurrent sentences are treated, point values for priors in many present-conviction categories, enhanced points for certain domestic-violence–related priors and for prior unlawful-firearm-possession convictions, rules for excluding older priors after crime-free community periods, and provisions that allow prior convictions omitted in past scores to be included in current offender scores or on resentencing. Several procedural and timing provisions are included: definitions and program rules for work-ethic camp transition training, day reporting, and partial confinement are clarified; the department’s collection and remittance duties for legal financial obligations are specified; and the act sets expiration and effective dates for particular sections (Sections 3 and 6 expire January 1, 2026; Sections 4 and 7 take effect January 1, 2026). Important substantive details are missing from the extracted text (for example, complete language on the modified sentencing levels, the full definition of “collect,” some parts of the “most serious offense” lists, and other amended sections cited in the bill header), so the precise changes to penalties, sentencing ranges, or the full scope of all amendments cannot be confirmed from these excerpts alone.

If enacted, the bill makes police more likely to arrest and book people when officers have probable cause they unlawfully possess a firearm (including on school grounds) and requires arrest and custody in more repeat DUI/physical-control situations. Practically, that will increase arrests and jail bookings for suspected illegal gun possession and for some traffic-related repeat offenders, raising workload and operating costs for police agencies and local jails and increasing the chance that people suspected of those offenses will be held until seen by a judge. The Department of Corrections would also take on a clearer duty to monitor and enforce legal financial obligations and to deliver collected payments daily to the superior court clerk without holding them in a departmental account, which changes its cash-handling and administrative duties; the department must also provide two weeks of transition training for work-ethic camp completers. The bill also changes many definitions and offender-scoring rules so courts can count more prior convictions (including certain domestic violence, sex offenses, unlawful firearm possession, meth manufacture, and other priors) with specific point values and timeframes, and it allows prior convictions omitted under older rules to be added at resentencing. That will likely raise offender scores for some defendants and lead to longer standard sentences for people with the listed priors, increasing costs for corrections and reducing some defendants’ sentencing options; courts will have more work evaluating how priors are counted. Key implementation details and the full impact on sentencing range and some definitions are unclear in the provided text, and some provisions have specific effective or expiration dates (sections 3 and 6 expire Jan. 1, 2026; sections 4 and 7 take effect Jan. 1, 2026).