Whatcom County index subcommittee maps local data plan to evaluate Justice Project

The Index Subcommittee of the Incarceration and Prevention Reduction Task Force met on April 3 to review a proposed evaluation and performance measurement plan for the Justice Project. VillageReach consultant Julia Garrett presented recommendations that would combine elements of Justice Counts, Measures for Justice, the Sequential Intercept Model and the Stepping Up initiative to track four primary outcomes: jail bookings, average jail length of stay, connections to care at release, and recidivism.

Garrett said the county will likely need a hybrid approach rather than an off‑the‑shelf product. “What I’ve recommended is that we use a little bit from all of those four different resources,” she said, summarizing a resource-comparison table she planned to circulate after addressing final comments.

The proposal matters because it would provide consistent outcome definitions and formulas (numerator/denominator) to measure progress across the Justice Project’s 15 implementation activities and to identify disparities. Garrett said the subcommittee has prioritized adding behavioral‑health measures and disaggregation by race and ethnicity so the county can surface inequities in both behavioral-health and criminal-justice systems.

Subcommittee members described what is already available and where gaps remain. Chief Caleb Erickson reported that the jail’s records management system (formerly Spillman, now maintained by Motorola Solutions) holds booking records back to 2014 and can produce counts of individuals and bookings and calculate length of stay. “We have data on the number of individuals who are booked into custody since 2014,” Erickson said, and noted the system produces canned reports by custody-duration categories (for example, less than 24 hours or more than three days).

Erickson and others said more complex measures will require additional sources or agreements. The jail’s records do not reliably include a consistent electronic flag for serious mental illness (SMI) or substance use disorder; clinical determinations are made by behavioral-health clinicians and recorded in separate medical records. Erickson said intake captures self‑reported race and ethnicity but that some entries are missing or were reset after a state-level rule change in the mid‑2010s, so “unknown” appears in some reports.

Garrett identified two measurement points that need further definition: what “connected to care” means in Whatcom County and how the county will define and measure “recidivism.” She listed possible definitions — referral to services, scheduling a post‑release appointment, or actual attendance — and said the evaluation plan will need agreed formulas and source fields. For recidivism, Garrett and Erickson noted the difference among rearrest, reconviction, return to custody and return for technical violations, and asked the group to choose both an event definition and a follow‑up period (for example, one, three or five years).

Participants raised legal and technical barriers to linking data across systems. A subcommittee member with public‑health knowledge noted federal privacy rules and urged that staff confirm permitted disclosures and de‑identification methods before aggregating clinical and justice data. Garrett acknowledged that data‑sharing agreements and HIPAA/CFR considerations are a next layer of work and flagged them as complex but necessary tasks if the county wants behavioral‑health disaggregation.

The group identified next steps and responsibilities. Garrett said she will follow up with Chief Erickson to clarify what recidivism metrics the jail can generate and will contact Mental Health Court manager Robin Lillins to discuss clinical definitions and connections to care. Index Subcommittee members said a joint work group formed by the behavioral‑health and legal & justice subcommittees will handle larger data decisions and that smaller technical conversations will involve jail records staff, public‑health analysts and IT. Members agreed Julia’s resource comparison and a localized evaluation plan will be circulated once finalized.

No formal votes or ordinance actions were taken at the meeting. The subcommittee’s next meeting is scheduled for June 5 at 2:30 p.m., which Garrett noted coincides with the final month of her current VillageReach contract.

The meeting record shows immediate deliverables: Garrett will refine the measurement table and share it; Erickson will confirm which standards and fields are available from the jail management and medical records; and IT staff will circulate a systems inventory previously compiled for the county. Several participants asked for clear, written definitions of SMI/SUD and recidivism before reporting begins so that future public reporting rests on consistent, auditable definitions.