Editor’s Note: Whatcom Watch has entered a cooperative agreement with Salish Current. When possible, we will share each other’s content. Salish Current, an online-only news organization, covers the North Sound area and Whatcom Watch mainly covers Whatcom County issues. The comments on this page were gathered by Salish Current.
Official Ballot Title:
The Whatcom County Council passed Ordinance No. 2023-39 concerning funding for public health, safety, and justice facilities and services. If approved, this proposition would authorize a sales and use tax of two-tenths of one percent (20 cents per $100.00) for costs associated with a new County jail, behavioral health, supportive housing, public safety, and other criminal justice facilities and services, as authorized by RCW 82.14.450.
Statement For:
Our jail is inhumane. We must do better.
Numerous public committees, consultants, behavioral health professionals and elected officials have pronounced our jail an inadequate, overcrowded, financial and legal liability. Its design, condition and lack of space for basic services is dangerous and unhealthy for inmates and staff. It was out-of-date and undersized when opened 39 years ago. Since then, Whatcom’s population doubled, mental health and drug issues worsened and inmates’ needs have grown.
It’s wasteful AND harmful.
We spend millions of tax dollars maintaining a jail that cannot meet our needs. Numerous legal requirements cannot be met. There’s little room for treatment or medical care. Inmates don’t have access to fresh air, natural light or recreation. Inadequate space limits visitation with attorneys and family.
Public safety has suffered.
Due to overcrowding, people charged with crimes are often released or not even charged. We’re experiencing increased theft, property crimes, overdoses, deaths and havoc from a growing drug crisis. Our community is greatly disadvantaged by a jail without capacity either to hold people accountable or deliver critical treatment.
This time it’s the plan voters asked for.
A levy passed in 2004 funded building and maintenance for our minimum-security work-center at Irongate and to construct a new main jail as well. However, more levy dollars were spent to shore up current facilities than envisioned. This time we have oversight ensuring funds to build a new safe jail and a behavioral care center on County property near I-5 and Slater. This location allows us to cost-effectively build needed facilities within minutes from both the courthouse downtown and Irongate, where related behavioral health facilities are being located.
In 2015 and 2017 voters rejected jail levies that did not provide for diversion and treatment measures. Since then, 15+ diversion and behavioral health facilities, programs and services have been established. Meanwhile, a diverse, informed group of citizens, mental health professionals, first-responders and community leaders created a comprehensive roadmap for an innovative, right-sized, humane jail as just one facet of a balanced constellation of effective steps to address broad community needs.
The roadmap, the Justice Project Implementation Plan, is Whatcom County’s response to 40+-year-old crisis created when the U.S. de-institutionalized mental healthcare. Long-stay psychiatric hospitals were supposed to have been replaced with smaller community-based alternatives, but an appropriately funded system never materialized. Our new jail and behavioral care center will be important components of improved integrated criminal legal and behavioral health systems, that with additional State funding, regional partnerships and leadership here in Whatcom County, could be a model for the rest of our country.
How it works.
For 20 cents on a purchase of $100, this November’s proposed sales tax levy is paid by everyone (including Canadian shoppers). It delivers an estimated $137 million, safe, modern jail with onsite behavioral care for offenders who need mental health and drug treatment. About 50% of proceeds will provide behavioral health and other public safety uses over 30 years. Vote YES. A comprehensive system for better criminal justice and behavioral health outcomes is within our reach.
Statement prepared by:
Peter Frazier is chair of the Yes! Safe Jail, Healthy Outcomes campaign committee. He is a member of the Justice Project Stakeholder Advisory Committee, and of the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force Behavioral Health Committee. Peter is a user experience consultant and entrepreneur now focused on local government reforms and innovations.
Statement Against
48%. That’s the percentage of people in our jail with a diagnosed mental illness. 73% are homeless and 85% are struggling with substance abuse. The one consistent fact about most of the people in our jail is this: they are struggling. Struggling to make their way, stay a positive course or even just make it through a single day without a crisis. So, why are we still focusing on a “jail” instead of tackling the common and known set of problems that leads to incarceration in the first place?
Some people commit terrible crimes and we agree that those people should be incarcerated. Some people commit other, less terrible crimes, that are simply antisocial and debilitating to the community. It’s this latter group we should focus on first in any criminal justice proposal because they are the majority of people in our criminal justice system.
We need programs connecting with people before they end up in jail and help them end the cycle if they do. This can be done by a new Office of Community Health and Safety, staffed by behavioral health specialists and other professionals working with the police and courts.
Inmates in our jail can only be sentenced to a maximum of 364 days; a jail is not a prison. In a few short months they’ll be released except then they’ll be just a little further behind with no shelter, no job, no hope. Can we expect good outcomes when that’s what our community offers?
To tackle this problem, one that is often generational, we need a new paradigm. For example, pairing police with behavioral health specialists who are connected to diversion programs is a known solution paying big dividends in cities across the country. Avoiding incarceration in the first place results in better, lower cost outcomes in the long run. Yet, diversion programs aren’t on the ballot; it’s a jail proposal on the ballot.
We still don’t know locations, timeframes, number of beds truly needed, the cost or how intervention and diversion programs will fit into the proposal. Where will mental health services be managed? Will there be programs for young people who may slip into trouble without intervention? Are there job and life skills training on the inside with a connection to a program when released? And so on. We are being asked to vote on a tax for a really big thing without knowing its total cost or even what it actually is.
There are just too many unanswered questions but we know what’s needed: intervention and diversion programs along with safe, healthy, hopeful facilities for people housed or working in them. This November, say NO to the jail. Tell our elected leaders to fully and immediately fund intervention, diversion and reintegration programs, speedy arraignments and trials; a new jail building can wait a bit. If we do that, I think we’ll see that a new “jail” shouldn’t be a building, it should be a place where people get help, learn, atone and find hope.
Statement prepared by:
Mike McAuley has been in the community for 25 years, while actively engaged in politics, civics and elected leadership for the past 22. He holds a bachelor of science degree from The Evergreen State College and a master’s degree from Western Washington University. He sits on the Bellingham Planning Commission and operates McAuley Design Works, a building design company in Bellingham.
