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Whatcom committee debates priorities for criminal justice data, dashboards and short-term measures
Summary
The Legal and Justice Systems Committee discussed data needs for tracking outcomes such as recidivism, length of stay in jail, diversion use, therapeutic courts and warrant processing; staff and consultants will collate measures and engage IT and Village Reach to assess feasibility.
Bertie, speaking for the committee staff, opened a wide-ranging Feb. 11 discussion on what data the Whatcom County Legal and Justice Systems Committee should request, measure and publish to support the county’s incarceration reduction efforts.
"It's usually easier to answer the question about what data do we need if we decide what are the questions that we want answered by the data," Bertie told attendees, and then summarized prior committee requests from 2018 and 2020 that emphasized consistent data definitions, baseline measures and the ability to track individuals across systems.
Committee members and system partners identified specific, measurable topics the group should prioritize: recidivism rates, average length of stay in jail (noting large shares of pretrial detention), diversion rates and completion…
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