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, permanent shift in underlying criminality. "When the booking restrictions were loosened in 2025, that's why we see a spikes in a lot of these warrant arrests," Harris said, noting the county's red/yellow/green booking system and a backlog of warrants and court processing tied to COVID effects.

Committee members and presenters repeatedly stressed a distinction between the two planning documents: a jail population forecast (what population would be if current practices and capacities do not change) and a jail capacity analysis (an engineering/design projection of bed needs under specified assumptions). Flity said the forecast is a planning tool, not a design document.

Beyond the booking count, presenters flagged characteristics of the booked population that bear on design and services: the reconstructed health data the team used indicate a high behavioral‑health burden among people booked in 2025 — Flity cited that about 71% had a behavioral‑health concern and approximately 45% met criteria the report classified as serious mental illness — and that many people in custody are older than in past years.

The committee debated how much diversion or a Behavioral Care Center (BCC) would reduce jail bed need. The Pasco analysis reported a relatively small immediate reduction in bed need tied to a BCC in the way the study framed it; presenters said that under current program configurations Pasco estimated only a modest number of people (the report example: roughly a dozen‑to‑two dozen) could be diverted from existing jail bookings into a new BCC. Several members said they were surprised and asked Pasco to disclose its assumptions and calculations.

Local program leaders clarified that the county's LEAD program currently operates largely on referral rather than as an arrest‑diversion model in the field; switching to field arrest diversion would require staff reallocation or expansion and sustainable funding. Committee members also emphasized that the report's diversion figure reflected the BCC's clinical and legal eligibility criteria as studied, not all potential new or enhanced diversion efforts (outpatient treatment, expanded LEAD, AOT or other alternatives).

Flity recommended several near‑term technical and governance steps before the council adopts a budget cap: produce a jail utilization management plan (to define booking and utilization protocols), complete a full staffing and operating cost analysis, require public renegotiation of interlocal agreements that determine cities' booking expectations, and include community subject‑matter experts in renegotiations. She warned that the ordinance language that aspires to split sales‑tax revenue (including a 50% target for behavioral‑health and re‑entry investments) could be put at risk if construction escalation and interest costs force major budget changes.

The committee recorded a list of follow‑up items — clarifying how charges were categorized in the dashboard, requesting the methodology behind Pasco's diversion estimates, improving jail health records (move from paper to electronic records), and comparing the cost and system impacts of additional court capacity (for example, an additional judgeship) versus additional jail beds.

No formal votes were taken at the meeting. The committee noted that the county council was expected to consider a resolution re‑articulating council values and a budget cap on April 28 and that several task‑force working groups would continue technical work leading into that decision.

Ending: Committee chairs asked staff and presenters to share data files and analytic notes and scheduled follow‑up discussion; public comment was called and no members of the public raised hands before the meeting adjourned.