Community Safety
Keeping families and communities safe and secure is a top priority of Governor Gregoire. She has added nearly 4,000 prison beds in the largest prison building program in state history to keep dangerous felons out of our communities. The Governor has enacted policies to hold offenders accountable, reduce repeat criminal activity and help former offenders become law-abiding members of society.
Governor Gregoire is absolutely committed to protecting our children and communities from sex offenders. She has taken aggressive steps to increase community protection from sex offenders, but she knows that more needs to be done.
The case of Tacoma’s Zina Linnik was a somber reminder of how one individual’s actions can have such a tragic impact not just on a family, but on communities across Washington. After Zina’s murder, Governor Gregoire asked Kitsap County Prosecutor Russ Hauge to chair a sex offender task force to recommend specific steps to help ensure no family endures the pain of losing a loved one in this way.
Everyone should feel safe in their homes, neighborhoods, schools and offices. Keeping our communities and streets safe from crime strengthens our society and helps us all build better, more productive lives. Governor Gregoire proposes to extend the progress made in the past session by further strengthening a number of protections against sex offenders, boosting the capabilities of our crime and toxicology laboratories, improving how we investigate child sexual abuse charges and better assisting crime victims.