Right Size Jail

09/02/2023

Democratic Party chair: Big jail is wrong answer to 'root' problem of homelessness

07/12/2023

We express appreciation to Council Member Todd Donovan, a lone voice of conscience who abstained from the final vote for a rushed and deeply flawed proposal that rejected most of our proposed amendments and did not wait for a follow-up study exploring the failure to address the drivers of incarceration (98% pretrial detention, 6-to-1 ratios of incarceration of Black and Indigenous persons, homelessness) that help make Whatcom's incarceration rate five times higher than in British Columbia over the border, and higher than Russia's!

County council sought balance between rehabilitation, incarceration

05/13/2023

Another way the Whatcom criminal legal system is broken.

'A violation of their rights,' public defender says

04/24/2023

After the resounding defeat of the last jail measure in 2017 the Sheriff and county council members promised to surplus and sell the unpopular LaBounty Rd site outside Ferndale (too far from Courthouse and services, too easy to turn into a mega-jail with modular additions). Now they want to build there again? Another broken promise. Arlene Feld is right:

"Task force member Arlene Feld echoed Peterson’s concern. She said a jail proposal that looks similar on the surface to past measures would jeopardize the public’s trust.

“If we do not listen to what people are saying to us, they will not trust us,” Feld said. “And they’re getting ready to resist.”

Officials also eye 0.2% sales tax for November ballot

04/15/2023

'Diversion alone will not curb incarceration'

04/10/2023

08/21/2022

"The big liberal idea is to send in teams of social workers instead, and there’s some big news on that out of Denver: Namely, it works. For the first time, researchers have found on-the-ground proof that an alternative response team, with no cops along, can tangibly reduce crime.

Stanford researchers looked at a handful of Denver’s police precincts both before and after the city began using vans of mental health specialists and paramedics to respond to some 911 calls in parts of downtown.

The rules were that the STAR teams (Support Team Assisted Response) could only answer calls such as public intoxication, person down, trespassing and public disorder. If there was any violence or weapons present, cops would go.

What happened is that less-serious crime in the targeted precincts went down 34%. It wasn’t just petty crime. A whole host of crimes that the team wasn’t even allowed to respond to — simple misdemeanor assault, for example — also went down.

In the study period, the teams answered 750 calls. But 1,400 fewer crimes were reported than in the six months prior (corrected for seasonality and other factors). This was the combination both of the teams not writing up anybody for crimes, but also a follow-on effect of preventing further crimes by diverting people to help, the researchers found.

“The evidence in this study indicates that the STAR program was … effective in reducing the designation of individuals in crisis as criminal offenders, and reducing the actual level of crime,” the study found (emphasis added)."

A new study in Denver finds alternatives to police really do cut crime. A comparison between Seattle and Denver suggests our 2020 wounds may still be too raw, writes columnist Danny Westneat.

04/19/2022

Friday Harbor security camera footage showed he never touched the bikes he was accused of stealing by a sheriff's deputy with a history of inaccurate reporting. The prosecutor failed to disclose this to his attorney as required by law. Although a jury eventually acquitted him, the public no longer patronized his auto repair business because he was an accused thief. Driven out of business, he and his partner are homeless. There are no consequences for the local prosecutor who broke the law.

Legally and ethically, prosecutors are required to turn over evidence — even when it could hurt their case. Those who don’t, however, face few consequences.

04/19/2022

John Oliver discusses the tactics that can make police interrogations so damaging, particularly for the innocent, and why he’s more of a Lorelai than a Rory....

04/09/2022

"While it all sounds helpful, there are still many questions over how, or if, these programs will make a real difference on jail overcrowding issues, especially as plans for a new jail remain unresolved.

The Whatcom County jail was originally built in 1983, with capacity for 148 inmates. With remodels, its current capacity is now 212, according to Deb Slater, Community Programs Coordinator for the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office. The nearby Jail Work Center has 150 beds, creating a total capacity of 362 inmates.

Currently, the average daily jail population — which includes both the main jail and work center — has risen to the low 280s, said Wendy Jones, Chief Corrections Deputy for the sheriff’s department.

Increases in the average jail stay and the number of mentally ill inmates held on felony charges are among several reasons for the increase, Jones said. ... While Jones hopes ART will have a positive impact, the significant increases of in-custody offenders with serious mental health issues leaves her feeling unsure.
“Given the limited capacity of services in the area, the high acuity we are seeing in those offenders who are coming into custody, and the nature of the charges that resulted in being booked, it may not have a significant impact on the jail population,” she said."

Amid calls to reform policing and criminal justice — and an aging, crowded jail — Whatcom officials, residents and law officers are looking to diversion programs for detainees with serious mental health or substance abuse issues.

04/01/2022

"Jail populations grew dramatically over the last few decades, with annual admissions almost doubling from 1983 to 2013 according to the Vera Institute of Justice, and most of the people sitting in local jails have not been convicted of a crime. The majority of those in jail are awaiting trial, many because they can’t afford bail; others may be there because they have been convicted and given short-term sentences. ...

There are 700,000 people in jail on any given day, and there are 1.2 million people in prison. What is overlooked is the number of people who are admitted to jail annually, which is roughly around 10 million jail admissions. Another important distinction between the jail population and the prison population is that, of the people who are held in jail, about two-thirds of them are being held pretrial. That means they haven’t been convicted of a crime and they’re innocent unless they’re proven to be guilty.

Roughly 75 percent of those individuals are there for what we would consider less-serious nonviolent offenses. Then you start to look at the racial and ethnic disparities, and that’s also quite alarming — people of color are overrepresented in the jail population three to four times what they are in the population."

The majority of people sitting in local jails haven’t been convicted of a crime.

02/21/2022

A must-watch.

John Oliver explains what critical race theory is, what it isn’t, and why we can expect to hear more about it in the coming months.Connect with Last Week Ton...