Whatcom County Jail

The news is still mostly bad. The jail remains very overcrowded, with three people in rooms built for one and as many as eight people living in rooms that were supposed to be shower rooms. There are about 270 people currently housed in the jail downtown, a facility built for less than half that number.

You will recall that in 2004 voters passed a sales tax increase to start gathering money to build a new jail. The money was first used to build an interim, minimum-security facility, which is now housing about 150 people. But that hasn’t meant a lessening of crowding at the main facility. Instead, people who are picked up with multiple outstanding warrants are actually having to serve time, which wasn’t the case before the new facility was built.

Meanwhile, the county had to discontinue it’s contract with a provider of a work-release facility for 50 prisoners after repeated failures to meet standards and a lot of problems with how that contractor facility was run.

The worse news is that county officials are now saying that the money they are collecting from the tax is not going to be enough to build a new, bigger, full-service facility by 2015.

Of the $3.2 million being collected annually, about $1.2 million a year is going toward staffing. Another $700,000 is being used to cover the costs of jailing prisoners from Whatcom County cities, part of a deal to win city support for more jail facilities back in 2004. Without that money cities would be forced to increase their law enforcement budgets to pay for jailing of people arrested by city police departments.

That leaves about $1.2 million being socked away every year to save up for building a new jail. Considering such a facility will likely cost $70 million or more, the county simply isn’t saving enough.

The situation leads to two potential outcomes: one, it seems only a matter of time until the county comes back with another tax increase proposal; and two, we are likely to see a time when more criminals who are supposed to be doing time are just let free, as we had just three years ago.