Progress House Work Release is a facility housing 75 offenders at a time from around the state. The typical stay is a few months; in the period 1998-2003, Progress House averaged 315 offenders per year. It has been located for years at 5601 6th Ave. in Tacoma, adjacent to Pierce County’s Remann Hall Juvenile Detention Center, but the Department of Corrections is seeking to move to the program to the grounds of Western State Hospital in Lakewood.

Progress House houses a variety of offender types. During the past decade, over two hundred sex offenders have called this facility home, as have hundreds of other violent offenders. In 2003, the judges of the Pierce County Superior Court requested that the program be removed from the grounds of the Juvenile Detention Center, saying the Center needed the building and that offenders should not be housed near vulnerable juvenile populations. (Because they are employed, offenders on work release are not constantly watched but are permitted to leave facility grounds without supervision.) A recent study commissioned by the Department of Corrections establishes that Progress House has an extremely high failure rate as measured by the number of 'graduates' who re-offend. This study result is consistent with the ongoing investigations of the Prosecutor’s office.