Officials consider how prevention and reduction efforts may impact incarceration numbers.
Based on current patterns and projected population growth in Whatcom County, the report from architecture and engineering firm DLZ projects an upward trend in jail population that is essentially linear. But could the county reverse that trend? If so, should a commitment to reducing incarceration play into considerations of jail size?
According to a 2017 report from the Vera Institute of Justice, Whatcom County’s total population grew by about two and a half times between 1970 and 2014. Its jail population, meanwhile, grew by about nine times, more than tripling the rate of incarceration per 100,000 residents. The county’s jail population has fallen since 2014, taking the largest dip through the COVID-19 pandemic and bouncing back afterward, though not quite to pre-pandemic levels.
In a 2022 survey of inmates in Whatcom County, 54% of respondents said “a stable place to live” would have helped them avoid jail, while 48% cited a need for help with mental health issues and 41% mentioned drug or alcohol treatment. That same survey — which had a 30% response rate — found that 43% lost their housing after being in jail while 35% lost their jobs.
DLZ’s report acknowledges factors affecting how many people are in a county jail. Among them is availability of community resources and access to diversion programs. Local case processing times in courts and delays in competency evaluations can also play a role in getting people out of jail who are being held pre-trial; in Whatcom County, the majority of the jail population on an average day has yet to be convicted of a crime.
Whatcom County has a bevy of initiatives aimed, at least in part, at keeping people out of jail. These include programs like Ground-level Response and Coordinated Engagement, or GRACE, and Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion, or LEAD, plus therapeutic and mental health court. In 2023, the county also launched an alternative response team consisting of behavioral health specialists who can respond to certain emergency calls instead of police.
But data on how much these programs reduce incarceration in the county is lacking, making their influence on future jail population tough to predict.
“We put a lot of time, money and effort into (diversion programs) in this community, but we don’t know yet what is working to actually keep people out of jail and out of the emergency room,” said Peter Frazier, co-chair of the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force but speaking independently.
Assessing these programs requires collecting data from a multitude of sources like the courts, the sheriff’s office, local police departments and the county Health and Community Services department. The various entities across the county all have different systems for collecting data. Often, they don’t even use the same categories.
“All these systems,” Frazier said, “they don’t talk to each other.”
In an effort to begin measuring the success of various aspects of the Justice Project — including those aimed at reducing incarceration — the county hired the nonprofit VillageReach to draft a Performance Measurement Plan. Released last June, the plan made several short- and long-term recommendations, beginning with dedicating a full-time position to oversee data collection.
In July, the IPRTF voted to endorse the VillageReach report and sent a formal recommendation to the county council to move forward with the plan outlined by VillageReach.
County spokesperson Jed Holmes said the county is currently exploring which data would be most helpful with making decisions related to the criminal legal system but is still in the “information gathering phase.”
If the county were to adopt the VillageReach plan or something similar, data collection could still take years. But the size of the jail will likely be determined in months.
Kim Ninnemann, a member of the Riveters Collective — which has been calling for the county to collect and publish more data about the criminal legal system since 2022 — worries that building a large jail could give the county an out when it comes to addressing upstream causes of incarceration.
“It’s sort of like assuming that there is no change and assuming that the system is going to be as broken as ever and then making (the jail) bigger to accommodate the brokenness,” she said. “We don’t want a bigger jail in decades. We would like to have better systems in place.”
Holmes said the county would take some additional data points into consideration when thinking about jail size, like the number of current inmates eligible for diversion programs. But he doubts that information will move the needle much when it comes to determining the number of beds in the new facility.
What can the county afford?
When voters in Whatcom County approved the sales tax to fund the Justice Project, they were assured that “about half” of the money raised would go to the jail and the in-custody services it provides, while the other half “expands behavioral health and other public safety uses,” according to the voter’s pamphlet.
But the text of the ordinance clarifies that the 50-50 split in funds will kick in after the first four to six years, at which point at least half of the money collected will go toward efforts to support behavioral health and incarceration reduction.
A 50-50 split in the total funds collected over time may look different than a direct 50-50 split each year, but Flaherty said that when it comes to considerations about jail design, she wants the county to make good on its promise.
“I really actually think we should be looking at what we can afford, because we made a commitment to voters that 50% of this sales tax would go toward behavioral health and services,” she said.
— By Christy Carley
Also read in Salish Current:
• “How big should Whatcom County’s new jail be? Part 1,” Feb. 10, 2026
• “Whatcom’s LEAD program offers lifeline, faces limits,” Aug. 7, 2025
• “New Whatcom County jail could face decreased funding ,” May 27, 2025
• “Jail, behavioral health, community policing challenge new Whatcom sheriff,” May 16, 2024
• “Jail needs to change, community agrees; but how?,” Jan. 3, 2023