Death of Washington Jail Standards Bill Risks Repeat of $2.5 Million Settlement That Closed One County’s Jail
by Chuck Sharman
Washington will remain one of just a dozen states without oversight or even enforceable standards for jails, after legislation to rectify the problem died on January 30, 2026, killed by lawmakers lobbied by a group representing counties and another representing police chiefs and sheriffs. That potentially leaves other counties in the state facing the same choice that forced Garfield County to shutter its jail in 2024 rather than risk another $2.5 million settlement over a detainee death.
The state briefly enjoyed the work of a State Corrections Standards Board (SCSB) from 1981 to 1987. Members including the state attorney general, state lawmakers, prosecutors and the Department of Corrections (DOC) director conducted annual inspections to ensure jails remained compliant with standards set by the state legislature in 1979. After lawmakers dissolved the SCSB in 1987, each of Washington’s 50 counties was supposed to establish and enforce its own jail standards. Yet 39 years later, when copies of those standards were requested by then-Attorney General Bob Ferguson (D), only 10 counties were able to comply.
State Sen. Rebecca Saldaña (D-Seattle) sponsored SB 5005 in the 2025 legislative session to revive this long-dormant oversight, which she said “really did improve conditions for the workers and for the people incarcerated in our jails.” Now, however, “[t]oo often people leave our jails in worse conditions than when they came in,” she said. Under pressure from the state’s Association of Counties and its Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, the legislation was scaled back until the word “oversight” appeared just once. But even that was too much for them, and the bill was sent to die in the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee at the end of January 2026.
In March 2024, tiny Garfield County (pop. 2,286) shut down its jail and transferred its detainees to lockups in neighboring counties, after settling a tort claim filed over the in-custody death of Kyle Lara in 2022. Oblivious jailers allegedly served two meals to his corpse after he fatally hanged himself in his cell, according to the tort claim.
Lara had been arrested in March 2022 after a fight with his girlfriend and booked into the jail. It had no trained guards, just 911 dispatchers to deliver meal trays and monitor 20 surveillance cameras, the claim said. But the technicians had no policy guidance and were told only to use their common sense before alerting any of four deputy sheriffs.
The claim allowed that Lara had been “difficult,” but he was placed in solitary confinement in a dingy basement cell of the 1901-era courthouse where the jail was housed. On the afternoon before he died, Lara was threatened with return to the state penitentiary in Walla Walla, where he had previously been incarcerated. That evening, he hung a sheet to block his cell camera before prying off a strap holding a wall TV and using it to hang himself. No dispatcher thought this merited a call to a deputy, however; one even delivered a food tray—twice—the next day, after he was already dead but before anyone realized it. A note found near his corpse blamed his suicide on his fear of returning to the Walla Walla prison.
With the aid of attorney Ryan D. Dreveskracht of Gallenda Broadman in Seattle, Lara’s parents filed a notice of tort claim with Garfield County in February 2023. The jail was subsequently shut down in March 2024, the month after the parties reached their settlement agreement. Approved in July 2024, it provided for a $2.5 million payout from the County to Lara’s estate, inclusive of costs and fees for its attorneys. See: Est. of Lara v. Garfield Cty., 2024 Tort Claim.
“As a parent to a young man with addiction issues, sometimes I prayed that my son would get picked up because he is safer in jail than on the streets,” his father, David Lara, told the Seattle Times. His mother, Rhonda Lara, said that “he deserved to be treated with dignity and respect,” but he “didn’t get either.”
“The county served two meals to his dead body,” she marveled. “How am I going to tell his daughter that?”
Additional sources: Spokane Spokesman-Review, SeattleTimes, Underscore Native News
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