This bill creates a new ombuds advisory council and amends the statute governing the office of the corrections ombuds (RCW 43.06C.040). The new council is an 11‑member body appointed by the governor (with recommendations allowed from the ombuds and the state office of equity), must be convened by December 1, 2025 (subject to appropriation), meet at least quarterly, follow the Open Public Meetings Act, and include current and formerly incarcerated people among its membership and cochairs. Council members serve two‑year staggered terms (no more than two consecutive terms), must complete training to use an antiracist lens, and eligible members, including currently incarcerated persons, shall receive stipends under RCW 43.03.220 with the Department of Corrections assisting to develop a payment process. The amendment to RCW 43.06C.040 requires the ombuds to establish priorities in consultation with the advisory council and expands and clarifies ombuds duties and procedures. Those duties include maintaining statewide contact methods, providing rights information and technical assistance to incarcerated individuals, soliciting and sharing aggregated feedback with the council, monitoring compliance with laws and policies, establishing a statewide reporting system and complaint procedures, holding at least quarterly public stakeholder meetings, and submitting an annual report by November 1 to the governor, the legislature, and the statewide family council. The ombuds may initiate or accept investigations into matters that could adversely affect incarcerated individuals’ health, safety, welfare, or rights, must normally require reasonable pursuit of internal DOC remedies before filing (with a specified 90 business day filing exception for incarcerated persons after filing an internal grievance, but not for complaints about threats of bodily harm or denial of necessary medical treatment), may decline investigations under adopted rules with notice to complainants, may not investigate underlying criminal convictions, and must issue a public decision at the conclusion of investigations while keeping supporting documents confidential as provided in law. These changes are procedural and administrative rather than criminal: they create a new advisory body, modify ombuds responsibilities and complaint/investigation procedures, and impose reporting, meeting, training, and stipend requirements. The text provided is incomplete in two respects: subsection (3) of RCW 43.06C.040 ends mid‑sentence in the available extract, and a separate fragment referencing the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 appears incomplete and contains an unclear term ("lable administrative remedies"); the intended effect of that fragment is not determinable from the available material.

If enacted, the law would set up an 11-member advisory council made up largely of people with lived experience in Washington prisons, including currently incarcerated people, to help set the priorities of the state corrections ombuds. That means the governor, the office of the corrections ombuds, and the Department of Corrections will need to spend time and money on appointments, quarterly meetings, antiracist training, and a process to pay stipends to eligible members — including logistics for paying people who are incarcerated — and those costs and the council’s convening are subject to appropriated funding and deadlines (convene by December 1, 2025). The council cannot take part in investigations or receive certain confidential records, but it can solicit feedback directly from incarcerated people and communicate recommendations to the ombuds, the governor, and the legislature, which will likely increase the ombuds’ and DOC’s workload around reporting, briefings, and responding to recommendations. The ombuds’ role would practically expand: it must consult the new council when setting priorities, hold at least quarterly public meetings, create a uniform reporting and complaint system, and may initiate investigations on a range of issues affecting health, safety, and rights; it must render public decisions at the end of investigations and report significant problems to the governor and legislative committees. People generally must try internal DOC remedies first before going to the ombuds, but incarcerated individuals have an exception that lets them file with the ombuds if 90 business days have passed since filing an internal grievance. The text provided is incomplete about how this interacts with the federal Prison Litigation Reform Act and other parts of RCW 43.06C.040, so there is uncertainty about exhaustion rules and any other implementation details not included here.