Senate Bill 5256 amends multiple existing laws (including RCW 9.95.420; 10.95.030; 9.94A.730; 7.69.032; 9.95.422; and reenacts/amends RCW 9.95.260) to change procedures for end-of-sentence and early-release reviews by the Indeterminate Sentence Review Board and to expand victims’ opportunities to participate. It requires pre-release examinations using methodologies recognized by experts to predict the probability an offender will commit sex offenses or other future criminal behavior and to assess whether the offender has met “restorative justice” conditions as defined by the board. For release decisions the board must generally hold hearings timed relative to minimum-term expiration (including special 90and 120-day timing rules), must order release unless the board finds by a preponderance of the evidence that (1) release is more likely than not to result in sex offenses or new criminal violations and (2) the offender has not sufficiently met restorative justice conditions, and must give great weight and written findings to victim objections. The bill changes procedures and eligibility for certain juvenile-offender and youth-related sentences. For aggravated first degree murder committed before age 16, and for those who were 16 or 17 at the time of the offense, the statute retains life as the maximum but establishes a minimum total confinement of at least 25 years and requires courts to consider youth-related mitigating factors (citing Miller v. Alabama). Persons sentenced as juveniles are ineligible during the minimum term for community custody, earned release, furlough, home detention, partial confinement, work release, and similar programs (with limited medical exceptions); the Department of Corrections must conduct an assessment no later than five years before minimum-term expiration and a predictive examination no later than 180 days before expiration. If not released, the board may set a new minimum term (in some provisions not to exceed five additional years), and public safety must be given the highest priority in discretionary release decisions. Other procedural changes include permitting eligible persons who committed crimes before age 18 to petition the board for early release after at least 20 years total confinement under specified conditions, requiring the Department to identify and provide programming when possible, imposing notice and disclosure duties to sentencing courts, prosecutors, victims and families, and directing the board to post comprehensive, unredacted minutes of relevant meetings and hearings on its website within 30 days. The bill also clarifies DOC supervision and reporting of conditions for persons released by the board, authorizes return-to-institution procedures with hearings for violations, and updates the board’s role in pardon review and recommendations. Important definitions and some language are missing from the provided excerpts: the bill references “restorative justice as defined by the board,” uses “department” in some sections without explicit identification, and several sentences and amended text passages are truncated or not included here, so full scope and exact definitions are uncertain from these extracts alone.

If enacted, the bill makes it easier for crime victims and survivors to be heard and to formally object to early or discretionary release decisions, and the board must give those objections strong weight and make written findings. The Department of Corrections must do more pre-release work—an assessment about five years before eligibility and a formal evaluation about 180 days before a hearing using expert-recognized methods to predict future sexual or other criminal behavior and to report whether restorative justice conditions (as the board defines them) have been met. People who committed serious crimes as juveniles would remain subject to long minimum terms with strict limits on early-release programs during those minimums, and petitions for those who were under 18 can be considered after long confinement under new procedural timelines. Victims, prosecuting attorneys, the indeterminate sentence review board, and the Department of Corrections are most affected: prosecutors must forward victim impact statements and contact information and notify victims about hearings; the board must disclose review records fully and post comprehensive, unredacted minutes online, and the DOC must provide programming, conduct evaluations, monitor released people, and report violations—likely increasing workload and administrative costs. There is some uncertainty in the text provided about how “restorative justice” is defined, which department is referenced in one section, and the truncated prosecutor duties, so certain operational details and costs are not fully clear from these excerpts.