Senate Bill 6203 creates a new Purpose section and amends RCW 9.94A.525 to clarify how an offender score is calculated under the Sentencing Reform Act, responding to the Washington Supreme Court decision State v. Lewis. The bill expressly states that out-of-state and foreign convictions may be considered in offender score calculations when the foreign conviction was obtained with sufficient safeguards for fundamental fairness and due process, and it adds detailed rules about what counts as a prior conviction, how the score is rounded, and how juvenile adjudications under Title 13 RCW are treated (excluded except for murder 1st/2nd and class A felony sex offenses). It also defines when prior felonies may be excluded based on time spent in the community (10 years for some class B felonies and repetitive domestic violence priors; five years for some class C felonies and serious traffic convictions) and provides a definition of “served concurrently” for pre‑1986 priors. The amendment specifies classification rules for out-of-state and federal convictions (classifying them to comparable Washington offenses or as class C equivalents when no comparable offense exists or the federal offense is typically in exclusive federal jurisdiction) and sets numerous special scoring rules and point values for categories of offenses, multiple priors, anticipatory offenses, and specified present-offense types. It adds one point if the present conviction was committed while the offender was under community custody, prescribes how motor vehicle and various felony domestic violence prior convictions are scored (including two-point and three-point rules tied to dates when domestic-violence allegations were pleaded and proven), and states that prior convictions not previously counted must be included when current sentencing law requires it or upon any resentencing. Adult convictions for failure to register as a sex offender are counted as one point. The extracted text is incomplete: subsection (18) ends mid-sentence and several referenced subsections (including (1)(b) and portions of (7) through (18)) and any additional new sections are not included here, so some specific scoring provisions and the complete structure of the amendment cannot be fully determined from the provided material. Affected parties identified in the text include sentencing courts, offenders, the juvenile court system, and out-of-state and federal jurisdictions whose convictions may be classified for Washington offender scoring.

If enacted, this bill would make it more likely that prior convictions from other states, federal court, or even other countries (if those convictions meet basic fairness safeguards) are counted when judges calculate an offender’s score, and it spells out when certain prior convictions must always count (for example class A felonies, sex offenses, and prior DUI felonies) or may be excluded after set crime-free periods in the community (ten years for some class B and repetitive domestic violence priors, five years for some class C and serious traffic priors). It also adds or clarifies specific point rules—one extra point if the current offense happened while on community custody, one point for failure-to-register priors, special point counts for motor vehicle theft and related offenses, and compounded point rules for felony domestic violence—so some defendants, particularly those with out-of-state, federal, DUI, vehicle-theft, or domestic-violence histories, are more likely to receive higher offender scores and therefore longer standard sentences. The people and systems most affected are sentencing courts (which will have to classify and assess the fairness of out-of-state and foreign convictions and apply new point rules), prosecutors and defense attorneys (who must assemble and contest prior-conviction records), and offenders (whose sentencing risk and likely sentence length may increase). These changes could raise burdens on courts and increase incarceration-related costs for the state if more offenders move into higher grid boxes, but the bill text in the provided excerpts is incomplete (subsection 18 and other referenced subsections are missing), so some scoring details and how a few categories are ultimately applied remain unclear.