Whatcom County task force prioritizes building jail data content and infrastructure for public dashboard

BELLINGHAM, Wash. — At its Dec. 3 meeting, the Whatcom County Incarceration, Prevention and Reduction Task Force’s Index Committee agreed to prioritize compiling and standardizing jail- and justice-related data into a public-facing dashboard and to pursue a near‑term progress report from county IT.

The committee’s chair opened the meeting at about 2:30 p.m. and framed the immediate goal as producing usable indicator content that can be shown publicly even before a full interactive dashboard is built. Marty demonstrated the Whatcom County Health Insights Power BI site as a model, saying: "So we're using, as our format, the Whatcom County health insights dashboard." Committee members said the goal is to start with accessible charts, clear notes on how figures were calculated and which populations are included or excluded, then iterate toward a more integrated solution.

Why it matters: Committee members said the public-facing indicators will help the community see trends in daily bookings, average length of stay and recidivism, and will make it easier to discuss disparities by race and ethnicity. Members urged clarity about calculations and metadata so numbers are not misread; Perry of county IT said any delivered data should show the national‑standard calculation used for metrics such as average length of stay.

Key details: County IT described recent operational work that has limited staff bandwidth — including a jail commissary system upgrade and a transition to a new jail medical provider — but said some Power BI configuration already exists and that IT can prioritize producing the requested data elements. Committee members settled on quarterly reporting as a baseline cadence (monthly was discussed as desirable where feasible) and asked IT to pull available historical data back several years where practical (committee members suggested starting with 2020 or 2022 to show trends while clearly noting COVID-era disruptions).

Members also flagged that 'recidivism' is not a single, self‑evident metric and urged the committee to adopt an explicit operational definition tied to available fields (for example, how booking and release dates are compared). Caleb offered to distribute a short paper outlining different levels of recidivism for committee consideration.

On ownership and infrastructure, members debated who should host the authoritative data and how to handle administrative access to court and health datasets. Jeremy warned that defining 'who owns the kitchen' — where and how combined datasets are stored and who manages access — is core to any sustainable solution. Perry said IT would work with Caleb and others and offered to provide a progress report to Marty by the end of next week to show what is feasible in the near term.

The committee also went around the room asking each member to state a top priority for the coming year; most answers clustered on two tasks: (1) clearly define the data elements and calculations that will feed any dashboard, and (2) map and begin to address infrastructure, interoperability and data‑ownership barriers.

The chair announced the group will shift its subcommittee meeting cadence to Jan./Mar. and set the next Index Committee meeting for Jan. 8. There were no public comments at the Dec. 3 meeting.

What’s next: IT will produce a near‑term progress update and the committee intends to refine metric definitions and a data‑ownership map ahead of the January meeting.