Whatcom County index committee weighs data definitions, governance for justice dashboard

Whatcom County officials and stakeholders on Oct. 2 discussed how to operationalize recommendations from consultant VillageReach for a public justice-data dashboard, agreeing to gather more technical information and return to the index committee in December.

The discussion centered on which county office should house and sustain the dashboard, what core measures can already be produced from county systems, and whether the county can disaggregate data by race, ethnicity and age. County Executive Satpal Sidhu recommended proposing the prosecuting attorney’s office as the lead location for the project, while several participants said the project will require cross-departmental staffing and technical work regardless of where it sits.

The committee reviewed VillageReach’s four core measures — number of bookings into the jail, average length of stay in jail, connections to care and recidivism — and heard that two of those (bookings and average length of stay) appear obtainable from current systems for 2024 and early 2025. Participants said recidivism needs a clear, agreed definition before it can be measured. One working definition discussed was counting rebooking of the same person into jail (excluding contacts that did not result in booking, such as traffic stops, and excluding people diverted prior to booking).

County staff and department representatives described technical and staffing barriers. Lynette of the Whatcom County Health Department said the county’s data are stored across many departments and roughly 15 computer systems and that health has completed about 10% of needed integration work. IT staff noted Spillman — the county’s records-management system used by law enforcement — could provide fields for several measures but that how fields are populated and how consistently they are used varies by agency.

Public defender Maya said her office could advise on confidentiality and the presentation of aggregated data but would not be a primary data source because of client confidentiality concerns. The prosecutor’s office and the sheriff’s office were described as likely sources for aggregate data related to bookings and custody; prosecutors were identified as able to provide certain data that defense could not for confidentiality reasons.

Participants agreed on immediate next steps and timeline: Perry, Caleb and other county IT staff will attempt to produce and bring bookings and average-length-of-stay data for 2024 and early 2025 to the December meeting; staff will check what race and ethnicity fields exist in major systems (starting with Spillman and the sheriff’s office) and what it would take to add or standardize ethnicity fields such as Hispanic/Latino; staff will also assess whether age groupings (including an 18-to-25 category) can be reported from existing date-of-birth fields. IT staffing changes this week — the county hired a new senior applications administrator — were reported as likely to increase capacity for the work, though more training is required.

Committee members emphasized the difference between two types of decisions: (1) administrative decisions about where the dashboard project will be housed and who will staff it, and (2) technical definitions of metrics such as recidivism and race/ethnicity categories. Several participants suggested the IPRTF and its subcommittee JPOP should play advisory and review roles; participants also noted that the IPRTF is a recommending body and not a decision-making authority for county governance or budget questions.

The committee did not take formal votes. Members asked that the December meeting include concrete data examples from county systems and an updated draft of the committee’s 2026 work plan so the group can decide what operational role the index committee will play going forward.

The committee scheduled follow-up in December to review the technical data pulls and to discuss whether to recommend housing the dashboard in the prosecuting attorney’s office, the executive’s office, or another county department with accompanied budget and staffing proposals.