Whatcom County Jail sees major population decrease

The Whatcom County Jail has seen a drastic decrease in its inmate population over the past several weeks.

Between March 1 and April 20, the number of inmates dropped from 303 to 154 between the downtown Bellingham jail, electronic home monitoring and the Interim Work Center, a minimum-security facility that is also in Bellingham and offers alternative corrections programs.

Wendy Jones, Whatcom County chief corrections deputy, said she’s never seen the jail population decrease so significantly.

Fewer arrests are being made, as the county works to reduce the jail population and fewer people go out in public due to COVID-19 social distancing measures, including the “Stay Home, Stay Healthy” order by governor Jay Inslee on March 23.

The Whatcom County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office is working with the Whatcom County Public Defender’s Office to conduct reviews and evaluations of offenders in custody, Jones said. She said cases are being reviewed to reach plea agreements or for possible reductions in bail, contributing to the lower jail population.

Jails and prisons nationwide have sought to reduce their inmate populations due to concerns about COVID-19 spreading through densely populated facilities. In Washington, governor Inslee announced that up to 950 nonviolent inmates would be released early, including individuals who were incarcerated for nonviolent and drug- or alcohol-related offenses, as well as people being held on lower-level supervision violations.

“This will help allow for increased physical distancing throughout the Department of Corrections’ system, reducing the population by up to 950 people to continue to reduce the risks to incarcerated individuals while balancing public safety concerns,” Inslee said in an April 13 press release.

“People are routinely released from jail and prison early all of the time,” said Blaine Police Department sergeant Michael Munden in an email to The Northern Light. “Most are released for good reasons and many go on to be productive members of society. In the case of those who may return to their former criminal lifestyle, we trust our partners in the Department of Corrections to properly monitor those released through the many options they have available to them.”

What happens to an inmate who is released early and commits another crime depends on the severity of the new crime, Jones said.

“Except for crimes of violence against people or domestic violence, we’re pretty much not taking people into custody,” Jones said. “DUI is the other exception for that, and we will either hold them until the judge lets them go or hold them until they sober up and we can let them go.”

Jones said people concerned about the release of a particular inmate should visit Whatcom County’s website, whatcomcounty.us, to better understand why the inmate was released. The website offers information about Whatcom County Jail releases by date.

The average daily release rate has decreased 41 percent, according to jail data. The jail’s daily release rate since March 1 was 10.6 inmates per day, whereas that number averaged 18 people per day in 2019. The reason the release rate has decreased is because fewer people are being booked into the jail, Jones said.

No inmates or staff of the Whatcom County Jail had tested positive for COVID-19 as of April 20.

“Everybody who comes into the jail, whether they are an offender, police officer, corrections deputy or attorney, has to get a temperature reading when they’re coming on shift or into the building,” Jones said. “We don’t want anyone bringing it into the jail.”

Remote court appearances, spreading inmates throughout the facility and a temporary halt to visitation are some of the precautionary measures the jail is taking to prevent COVID-19 from infecting inmates or staff.

The jail was built in 1984 to house one person per cell, but within 10 years, two people regularly shared a cell, Jones said. Now, the reduced population means that every inmate has their own cell, even with two units currently closed to construction and two medical dormitories sectioned off for potential COVID-19 response.

The medical dormitories have air vents that channel air outside as opposed to circulating it through the facility. This helps redirect respiratory droplets caused by coughing and sneezing to vents that are regularly cleaned by maintenance, Jones said.

Inmates have cooperated with the new measures, Jones said. She pointed to communication between jail staff and inmates as the primary reason there hasn’t been pushback to the new measures. To help ease the loss of visitations, the jail is providing extra supplies for letters and relying on phone calls for inmates.

Jones said her biggest concern is a staff member being exposed to COVID-19 outside the jail and bringing it into the facility.

“That would potentially be a nightmare scenario for us,” Jones said. “Everyone is being very careful and we’re taking the precautions that we can, so I’m hoping that scenario does not occur.”

Kittitas County agreement

Barely four months into its newest inmate housing agreement, Whatcom County brought its 10 inmates back from Kittitas County on April 1 due to extra space opening up in Whatcom County’s facilities.

The agreement, which allows the county and its municipalities to house inmates in the Kittitas County Jail, went into effect on January 1 to help alleviate capacity constraints while Whatcom County undergoes a $4.2 million construction project that started in January to replace old cell doors.

Although a decreased Whatcom County Jail population from COVID-19 has lessened the need for extra housing, Jones predicted that the jail will eventually go back to transporting inmates the 190 miles to Ellensburg, where the Kittitas jail is located. 

“I’m sure that we’ll be back because I suspect that after all the restrictions related to COVID are lifted, bookings may then increase if people are out and about more,” Jones said. “I would anticipate by this summer, depending on how the pandemic goes, we may have offenders back in Kittitas.”

The agreement with Kittitas County followed Yakima County’s abrupt termination of its previous contract with Whatcom County in August. Ed Campbell, director of Yakima County’s corrections department, declined to comment on why his county terminated the contract. Whatcom County had begun its contract with Yakima in 2017.

Whatcom County municipalities pay Whatcom County’s corrections bureau $131 per day to house an inmate, whereas Whatcom County pays Kittitas County $66.50 per day to house an inmate. The extra fees charged to Whatcom’s cities cover communications, transport and other functions that Whatcom County now handles.

“Communication with Whatcom County has been tremendous,” said Steve Panattoni, the Kittitas County Jail superintendent who helped facilitate the agreement. “Our sergeants work with theirs on a daily basis.”

The Kittitas agreement anticipates 20 to 50 Whatcom County inmates per week at the jail, Panattoni said. The jail has 209 beds, about 68 of which can be used for outside inmates.

The jail’s capacity for Whatcom County inmates is about 70, depending on the economy and other factors, he said.

The Kittitas agreement was made to help alleviate space constraints as Whatcom County works on remodeling its jail. Kittitas County can work with Whatcom County beyond the completion of the Whatcom County Jail renovations, Panattoni said.

Construction continues at Whatcom County Jail

Construction of 160 new cell doors in the Whatcom County Jail is part of a larger plan to update the building. Some of the renovations have been needed for a long time, almost since the start of the jail’s operations.

“Initially, the downtown jail started having problems three years after we opened,” Jones said of the 36-year-old jail. The opening of the Interim Work Center in 2006 helped with capacity constraints when it added 146 beds, but about five years ago, population crowding once again became an issue, she said.

While the number of individual inmates at Whatcom County Jail has decreased 29 percent over the past decade, crowding has occurred nonetheless. Of the inmates who are coming in, many are staying longer because they are more serious offenders, Jones said. These cases also tend to be more complicated and move at a slower pace through the criminal justice system.

Felony-level drug charges and DUIs were the two largest categories of offenses in 2019, Jones said.

Construction is continuing as scheduled, Jones said. The construction site is separated from inmates and workers are taking proper social distancing measures. Doors for the first two units are finished and inmates are already occupying those cells, creating what Jones hopes will be an easy template for the remaining units.

Rusty Noble, special project manager for Whatcom County, said new cell doors were the first priority for the construction project.

“They are the original doors of the jail. They’re out-of-date,” Noble said. “They’re opened and closed thousands of times and kicked on and worn out. For the safety of the officers, as well as the inmates, that was the first thing that needed to be taken care of.”

Noble said the original assumption was that construction would take a year to a year and a half, but he doesn’t think it will take as long as initially projected.

Best-case scenarios project completion by February 2021.

“The [construction workers] learned from those first two units and now have everything straightened out to go through the rest of jail,” Jones said. “We’re hoping it’ll speed up a little bit, but we’ll see.”

Before COVID-19, the sheriff’s office was already putting greater emphasis on alternatives to incarceration to ease facility constraints.

The county is listening to public opinion that is asking for treatment of people convicted of crimes instead of jail time, Whatcom County sheriff Bill Elfo said in February. When someone is convicted, the county will determine if they are eligible for the Interim Work Center or pre-trial home monitoring. Other initiatives include lowering bail and releasing people on a promise to appear in court.