Washington State Department of Corrections

And so it really becomes a question of degree.

And what we always fall back on and what most state labor boards and the National Labor Relations Board is going to say is that when we get to issues regarding the surveillance because of the the tremendous impact that that has on working conditions that is ordinarily going to be something that we need to bargain over okay so in washington we've got our second case and this is the state of washington the case is teamsters local 117 versus washington state department of corrections uh it will be in the case notes it was decided a few months ago now this is a gps case And so, you know, let's talk a little bit about how things work there.

And so this is the statewide correctional group out in Washington.

they're going to have job duties to take them outside the facilities, right? So primarily we've just got transport, lots and lots of transport work.

However, there is no evidence that solitary confinement makes prisoners safer, and the law remains a political point of contention.

Eldon Vail is the former secretary of the Washington State Department of Corrections.

He says solitary confinement reform requires more than legislative change.

You've got to have committed leadership.

And when we hear the stories, it's shocking even to me that they're not receiving proper nutrition, proper medical care.

But this is an everyday occurrence in the Washington Department of Corrections and a lot of the Department of Corrections across the country.

And it's scary.

Think about the people who have a set sentence.

They arrested him at a Lehigh tiny house village in Interbay in Seattle.

He was wanted by the Washington Department of Corrections for violating the conditions of his lifetime supervision after being convicted of first-degree rape of a child against a 10-year-old girl.

He'd been on the lam for five years and all that time, he was living at the tiny house village in Seattle operated by the Low Income Housing Institute, which is odd because as Ari Hoffman pointed out in his reporting, Lehigh, when they opened the Lake Union Village, which is a different Seattle tiny house village that's nearby, they told Fox 13 that it would conduct background checks on prospective residents.

According to Fox 13, Lehigh said the screening would specifically check for sex offender status, active warrants and other criminal history.

He was found guilty on two counts and received a sentence of 20 years.

According to the Washington State Department of Corrections timeline, Crone was released after serving only three and a half years of the 20-year sentence.

being incarcerated from March 19, 1984 to December 30, 1987.

He should have been in prison until 2004, 17 years after his release.