Whatcom County task force reviews draft Justice Project measures, flags major data-access gaps

At a June 5 meeting of the Index Subcommittee of Whatcom County’s Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force, VillageReach consultant Julia Garette presented a near-final draft of evaluation measures for the county’s Justice Project and outlined which local data systems can and cannot currently feed a centralized data warehouse.

Garette said the draft is still being refined and described a three-tier evaluation approach — process, outcome and impact — intended to answer “how much did we do, how well did we do it, and is anyone better off?” The metrics she highlighted include the number of jail bookings, average length of stay, connections to care at release and recidivism rates as population-level outcomes tied to the project’s five strategies and 15 projects.

Why this matters: committee members said reliable, linked data are needed to measure whether the Justice Project reduces jail use and improves health and safety in Whatcom County. At several points speakers warned administrative and legal barriers mean some key sources — notably hospital electronic health records and many court case-management systems — are not currently available to the county’s analytic infrastructure.

Garette framed the evaluation plan using a results-based accountability structure: process evaluation for activities tied to the 15 projects; outcome evaluation for system-, services- and facility-level definitions of success; and impact evaluation to detect population-level changes in health and safety for residents involved with behavioral health and the criminal legal system. She cautioned that population-level…