Whatcom County officials describe effects of loosening jail booking restrictions; courts see backlog, jail sees more people with serious mental illness

WHATCOM COUNTY, Wash. — Whatcom County law enforcement and court officials told the county's Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force on May 12 that a February change to jail booking guidelines is allowing more arrests but also revealing a large backlog of outstanding warrants and increasing demand on jail behavioral-health services.

Sheriff Tanksley said he changed local booking restrictions on Feb. 1 to tie whether officers may book someone to jail capacity rather than to lists of specific charges, and to let officers see in real time in the county computer-aided dispatch and records system (CAD/CAR) whether the jail is accepting male or female bookings. "What I did in February of this year, I modified those booking restrictions to be based upon jail capacity and not just charges," he said.

The policy change has led to more bookings but not a sustained rise in average daily population, county officials said. Undersheriff Harris reported a roughly 3–5 more bookings per day since restrictions were loosened: February 2024 had 315 bookings versus 444 in February 2025; March and April 2025 showed similar year-over-year increases. At the same time, Harris said the county identified thousands of outstanding warrants tied to events during the COVID-era booking restrictions, which he said had grown to "over, I believe, 8,500 warrants in Whatcom County" earlier this year; a later tally provided to the group put the April total at 8,185 warrants across jurisdictions.

Court administrators and defense counsel told the task force the increase in bookings is lengthening court calendars and complicating efforts to clear warrants. Raelene, who tracks multi-jurisdictional warrant counts, said courts are attempting coordinated "warrant wash" or quash days and weekly quash calendars in some municipalities but that scheduling and file-location differences across city courts slow progress. District and superior-court staff described longer calendars, greater use of interpreters and an increase in overtime because hearings start later and run longer.

Defense attorneys and public defenders urged limiting bookings for certain nonviolent traffic-status offenses that account for many warrants, such as driving with a suspended license in the third degree. Maya, speaking for her office, said standalone DWLS 3 charges and other driving-status offenses often trigger cascading warrants across jurisdictions and can discourage people from coming forward to quash warrants. "There really isn't a good way to fix it once someone is caught in that cycle except for arrest," she said, adding that incarcerating people on driving-status offenses "just should not be a priority in my opinion."

The county's mental-health clinician team reported that jail providers are seeing more people with serious mental illness (SMI) since the booking change. Hannah Sloan, representing the jail mental-health providers, said bookings of people with SMI have increased by about 20 individuals per month compared with the four months before the restrictions were lifted; her team is serving roughly 30 more individuals per month and delivering about 100 additional services per month. "With only three individuals providing assessments and interventions in the jail, it's been pretty difficult for us to stay on top of things," she said.

Officials and advocates suggested several interim and longer-term responses: regular, countywide coordination for quash calendars or a portable-quash mechanism that could address warrants across municipal and district courts; targeted booking restrictions for low-risk, status-only traffic offenses; and a clearer inventory of data to distinguish bookings by charge type, whether warrants or fresh probable-cause arrests, and service needs for people with behavioral-health needs.

Multiple speakers urged better shared data and clearer pathways for people who want to resolve warrants. District-court staff and probation representatives said they were advertising that district court will hear quash requests Tuesday through Friday and that local "warrant wash" events have had some success. Multiple speakers also argued that a cost analysis would help decision-makers compare the fiscal and public-safety tradeoffs of diversion versus incarceration.

Task force members said the discussion should inform the county's ongoing design of a new behavioral-care facility and other diversion investments, and they recommended that working groups and committees take up narrower follow-up topics — for example, DWLS 3 as a distinct policy question and the intersection of SMI and criminal charges for diversion eligibility.

Officials emphasized limits on local authority. Raelene and others noted that courts and prosecutors set many procedural rules and that jail use agreements between the county and city law enforcement agencies affect how booking choices are made in practice. Sheriff Tanksley said he discussed the change in booking practice with municipal judges, the prosecutor's office and defense counsel before implementation.

The task force did not adopt a formal countywide policy in the meeting; members identified next steps including committee follow-up, more detailed data requests and further coordination among courts, law enforcement, public defenders and treatment providers.

Ending: Task force co-chairs said the group will summarize the meeting's findings and carry outstanding questions into committee work on diversion, data and facility planning.