This bill authorizes Washington Supreme Court bailiffs and Administrative Office of the Courts (AOC) court security personnel to conduct threat assessments on behalf of judicial officers. It requires the Supreme Court and the AOC to ensure those personnel are qualified by training and experience before performing threat assessment duties, allows those personnel to receive criminal history record information (CHRI) that includes nonconviction data only for investigations of threats as defined in RCW 9A.04.110, limits use and dissemination of that CHRI to those investigative purposes, and requires founded threats to be referred to local law enforcement (which may report outcomes and anticipated actions back). The bill amends RCW 10.97.050 to broaden rules for CHRI dissemination and adds recordkeeping requirements. Among the changes are that conviction records may be disseminated without restriction; CHRI about incidents within the last 12 months for persons currently being processed by the criminal justice system may be disseminated without restriction; CHRI including nonconviction data may be shared between criminal justice agencies for administration of criminal justice or related employment purposes (subject to RCW 13.50.260) and under specified statutory, contractual, research, audit, and investigative conditions; and CHRI that includes nonconviction data may be disseminated to supreme court bailiffs and AOC court security personnel for the specified threat investigations. Criminal justice agencies must record most CHRI disseminations and retain those records for at least one year, and RCW 4.24.550 governs dissemination and provides civil immunity regarding sex offender information. Legally, the bill modifies existing statutes (amending RCW 2.04.260 and RCW 10.97.050 and adding a new section to chapter 2.56 RCW) to create new authority and procedural rules for threat assessments and CHRI sharing and recordkeeping. It also adds a definition of “judicial officer” to cover a range of federal and state judges, industrial appeals judges under Title 51 RCW, and administrative law judges under Title 34 RCW. The extracted text does not show the specific new section number in chapter 2.56, the full texts of the external RCWs it references (including the definition of “threat”), any effective date or implementation timeline, or any appropriations or staffing details.

If enacted, Washington Supreme Court bailiffs and court security staff at the Administrative Office of the Courts will take on new responsibility for conducting threat assessments of people who threaten judges and other listed judicial officers, and they will be allowed to receive criminal history records that include nonconviction information for those investigations. That means those offices will need to train and qualify personnel, set up procedures to request and handle sensitive CHRI, and refer any founded threats to local law enforcement, who may then follow up and report back; criminal justice agencies must also log most CHRI disclosures and keep those logs for at least a year. The people most affected are judicial officers (expanded to include many federal, state, and administrative judges), Supreme Court bailiffs, AOC court security personnel, local law enforcement, and criminal justice agencies. Agencies may face new costs and administrative work for training, records and referral processes and take on privacy and legal risk because nonconviction data can be shared for these narrow threat investigations; the text does not specify funding, an implementation schedule, or some cross-referenced definitions, so the scope and timing of those costs and procedures are uncertain.