House Bill 2403 (introduced 2026 by Reps. Farivar, Scott, and Reed) modifies Washington law related to sex offender registration and related sentencing and reentry procedures. The bill amends multiple existing statutes (including RCW 9.94A.515, 9A.44.132, 9.94A.030, 9.94A.701, 9.94A.702, 9.94A.501, and 72.09.270), replaces the Table 2 seriousness-level listing in RCW 9.94A.515, and creates at least one new section. It implements changes recommended by the sex offender policy board and prescribes new classifications and penalties for the crime of failure to register. Substantive legal changes shown in the extracted text include: (1) revised criminal classifications in RCW 9A.44.132 that make failure to register under the primary registration duty a class C felony, elevate it to a class B felony if the person has two or more prior felony failure-to-register convictions, and treat other registration failures (including some nonfelony sex and kidnapping registration duties) as gross misdemeanors; violations are treated as ongoing offenses for statute-of-limitations purposes unless registration duty is relieved under RCW 9A.44.141 or 9A.44.142. (2) Amendments to sentencing and supervision law that set specific community custody terms for various convictions (for example, three years for certain sex or serious violent offenses, two years for second/subsequent failure-to-register violations, and one year for certain first felony registration violations), clarify when courts may impose community custody for short confinements, and specify which misdemeanor, gross misdemeanor, and felony probationers or community-custody individuals the Department of Corrections must or may supervise, including risk-assessment and earned credit rules. The bill also amends the criminal sentencing definitions chapter (RCW 9.94A.030) to add or revise many operational definitions (including terms such as "collect," "community custody," "electronic monitoring," and others), requires the Department of Corrections to perform early assessments and develop individual reentry plans (with timelines and specified contents such as family contact plans, education/employment portfolios, and supports for individuals convicted of sex or registration offenses), and directs practical reentry tasks prior to release (including obtaining an identicard or driver’s license for consenting individuals confined 60 days or more). A new section directs the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs to review and report on model policies to streamline and enable technology-based or remote sex offender registration processes by December 1, 2026, with an update by June 1, 2027. Important textual details are missing from the provided extracts (the amended Table 2 is truncated, the full amended text of RCW 9A.44.132 and other revised sections are not shown, and the new section(s) are not fully printed), so the exact wording of many changes and some procedural specifics cannot be determined from the available material.

If enacted, the bill will push more people — especially those convicted of failing to register as sex or kidnapping offenders, current sex offenders, certain domestic violence offenders, and people sentenced under specified alternatives — onto defined periods of community custody and increase when the Department of Corrections must supervise them. Courts will be required to attach set community custody terms (for example, a first failure-to-register can carry up to one year, a second or subsequent two years), and the Department will need to run risk assessments, supervise more misdemeanor and felony cases regardless of risk in some categories, and deliver daily collected payments to superior court clerks. The Department of Corrections, local courts, sheriff and police organizations (through a WASPC review of registration procedures), community justice centers, and county law and justice councils will face new operational work and likely higher costs: staffing for assessments, creation and ongoing updates of individualized reentry plans, arranging IDs before release and paying fees, increased supervision and electronic or partial confinement capacity, and administrative changes to registration processes. The bill sets deadlines for WASPC reporting and requires the department to do timely assessments and reentry planning, but it does not include funding or full implementation details in the provided text, so how agencies will cover these added workloads and costs is unclear.