Analysis to Whatcom County behavioral‑health committee ties 2025 booking spike to eased booking restrictions and raises questions about diversion and jail size

Heather Flity, co‑chair of the incarceration task force and executive director of the Chucket Health Foundation, told the Whatcom County Behavioral Health Committee on April 21 that her prototype dashboards show a sharp rise in jail bookings in 2025 and wide uncertainty about how many beds a new facility would need.

"When a community has a shared, honest understanding of where things actually stand, it asks smarter questions," Flity said as she reviewed dashboards that draw on jail booking spreadsheets, a Pasco forecast and other system data.

The presentation set out several headline figures from the committee's planning materials: 4,743 jail bookings in 2025, an average daily bookings rate of roughly 13, and a median length of stay of two days for 2025 bookings. A separate jail capacity analysis produced a long‑range bed‑need range of roughly 458 to 699 beds depending mainly on assumptions about average length of stay; the report team told the committee that holding average length of stay to about 19 days would imply the lower end (~458 beds) while longer stays push needs toward the higher end.

Undersheriff Steve Harris and other speakers said much of the 2025 increase reflects operational changes rather than an immediate,…