Whatcom County legal and justice subcommittee outlines 2026 workplan, requests jail and pretrial data

The Whatcom County Legal and Justice Systems Committee on a October meeting reviewed a draft 2026 action plan prioritizing bail and pretrial analysis, diversion and reentry services, and planning for a new jail and behavioral health center, and directed staff to attempt to compile release and case data to inform those efforts.

Committee chair (name not specified) opened discussion by calling attention to items already completed and asking members for ideas on priorities for 2026, saying the group should continue "to unravel the diversion part" of the jail and behavioral health project and to review whether the public safety assessment and other pretrial tools produce racially disparate outcomes.

The committee's nut graf: members agreed the new jail and behavioral health center remain the central, long-term project, and they want short-term data and program inventories to guide interim diversion and reentry work while construction and planning continue.

Committee members and county staff discussed several data requests and practical limits. Jake (committee member/staff) urged focusing on the large project of the new jail and behavioral health center and on how current resources can support diversion until that facility exists. A second participant said the committee should not just analyze whether bail is being applied fairly across racial and ethnic groups but also "whether bail should be imposed at all," and noted recent charging-practice changes appear to speed decisions about whether to file charges.

Members asked county staff to examine release records to determine whether people booked in the county jail are being released sooner under the new charging timeline, or instead being referred to municipal courts. Eric (county staff) and others described options for pulling a before-and-after data extract if IT can identify when charging decisions began being pushed more rapidly. Caleb (chief) was named as a person staff might contact to help access records management data; attendees also discussed asking Laurie, the jail administrative secretary, to help produce the monthly "jail aging" report in a more usable form.

Committee co-chair Wendy Tarkin asked staff to explore whether the records could indicate people awaiting trial who are subject to competency proceedings or other legal holds without disclosing medical diagnoses, and warned that mental-health diagnoses cannot come from jail medical records because of confidentiality. Staff said competency-proceeding status and case-level public records could be used to identify reasons for case delay without violating medical privacy.

During the meeting a county jail aging report was cited as listing 23 people held more than 365 days; the report does not identify reasons for delay. Committee members said those long-term cases are the ones they most want to understand, and recommended focusing analyses on persons held 90 days or longer if a narrower window is more practical for staff.

The committee reviewed a draft schedule of 2026 agenda topics: January updates from prosecutors, public defense, law enforcement and corrections on diversion programs and an inventory of current diversion programs using the sequential intercept model; March joint meeting with the Behavioral Health Committee and a data dashboard presentation and administration update on plans for the new jail and behavioral health care center; May court updates (Superior Court Judge Jones, district court, and small cities); July inventory of reentry services and a review of an inmate survey; and November another joint meeting for an administration update. The co-chairs noted the draft assumes a bimonthly meeting cadence that has not yet been adopted.

The committee discussed changing its regular meeting cadence from monthly to bimonthly and possibly shortening or lengthening meeting length. Several members signaled support for moving to bimonthly meetings and for an 11 a.m. start time with one hour duration, but the committee did not have a quorum to vote. The chairs asked staff to place a motion and vote on the calendar change on the next Legal and Justice Systems Committee agenda.

No formal motions were voted on at the meeting. Instead, the committee produced several directions to staff: attempt to extract release and charging-timeline data from records systems to compare before and after recent charging-practice changes; work with jail administrative staff to produce usable aging reports focusing on people held 90 or 365 days; and coordinate data and agenda items with the Behavioral Health Committee for joint meetings in 2026.

Members also flagged practical constraints: IT and records staff have limited bandwidth, and producing the requested extracts may require cooperation from the sheriff's office and jail administrative staff. Committee members asked staff to report back at the next meeting with what data can be produced without violating confidentiality or incurring unreasonable staff time demands.

The meeting closed without public comment and with plans to reconvene in December for a joint session with the Behavioral Health Committee and to take the calendar vote at a subsequent meeting when a quorum is present.