Whatcom County Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force member outlines information needed for successful implementation of a new jail.
Ed.: The essays, analyses and opinions presented as Community Voices express the perspectives of their authors on topics of interest and importance to the community and are not intended to reflect perspectives on behalf of Salish Current.
The Whatcom County Justice Project Needs Assessment Improvement Plan was passed by the voters in 2023 as part of an ordinance which levied a 0.2% sales tax to fund a new jail and behavioral health center and to fund addressing the root causes of incarceration. This Justice System Improvement Plan includes a strategy of oversight, accountability and transparency.
Voters were promised in the plan that the county will “collect data to measure progress toward desired outcomes and develop a data dashboard for criminal legal system organizations to share data with one another and the public.” This has been a difficult task, due both to the inability of current IT systems within the various agencies to track this data and the lack of committed funding for professional leadership to coordinate this project and for needed data analysts.
The Justice Project’s newly published dashboard is illustrative of these problems. The individual data from each agency is either incomplete, not up to date or unavailable and replaced by a list of improvements without outcome measures. Despite everyone’s best intentions, we have a long way to go.
I am concerned that we have accomplished little regarding the data needs, except perhaps for financial data. We need information about who the people are who become involved with the justice system and what happens to them at each step of their involvement. Once released, do they successfully avoid further entanglement with the law or are they back again with new arrests? What programs would help the greatest number of individuals be successful?
Without data, we cannot study any of these issues, and if we can’t study them, we have no way of knowing which changes are the most helpful and which need modification or replacement.
What is needed
To gain this very important information, we need measurements in multiple dimensions:
- What do we need to know about those who are incarcerated to inform our decision about the size and function of a new jail?
- What are the outcomes of the programs we develop as recommended in the implementation plan?
- Are the individuals in the justice system being treated humanely with opportunity to change the trajectory of their lives?
- And ultimately…is the public safer from violent crimes?
These are important questions that need investment and analytic expertise to answer.
There are two priorities the county must pursue to accelerate progress toward the desired data results:
- Prioritize use of the Implementation Plan’s budgeted $350,000 per year to fund dedicated data capacity, including project leadership and adequate data analysts. There is never enough money to go around, yet with the jail and behavioral health center proposed budget over $200 million, $350,000 is the proverbial “drop in the bucket,” albeit an important drop.
- Move forward with implementing the recommendations already laid out by Village Reach, a research and data analytics team contracted by the county to develop a performance measurement plan for the Justice Project. This consultant report was completed in June of last year and was endorsed by the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force.
Getting funds for data development is not easy. It is hard to compete with providing adequate housing, mental health treatment and other needed social programs. Yet without data, we are flying blind and inevitably waste more public money and effort through the consequences of our potentially erroneous assumptions.
–By Dr. Berdi Safford
Editor’s note: A range of “Alternatives to Incarceration” measures were discussed by Dr. Safford and other local experts at a workshop held on April 7, 2026 in Bellingham. The event is available for viewing here.
Dr. Berdi Safford is a retired family physician and former medical director of Family Care Network. She practiced in Ferndale for over 40 years. She is now a member of the Whatcom County Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force and chairs their Information Needs and Data Exchange Subcommittee.