Why Do We Need a New County Jail?

David Camp is a CPA in private practice in Bellingham. He also writes the Port Watcher column.

“Be curious, not judgmental”
—Walt Whitman

Last month we ran the primary candidates’ questionnaires. The key points addressed to the candidates were fiscal, given the current crisis level of county finances. For example, sales tax revenues are still well below those of 2006, despite half the population of Surrey doing their grocery shopping on the Guide. As a result, The county has implemented cost-cutting measures: a hiring freeze and compulsory furloughs in county staff positions, and cuts in services across the board. These have been tactical measures, mostly; what is required now is work on what longer term actions are available to improve fiscal sustainability.

One area which has had an extraordinary rate of expense increase is the county lock-up: over the past twelve years, the cost of incarcerating people in Whatcom County has increased from under $5 million in 1998 to $11.9 million in 2010, a compound annual increase of 7.51 percent. This is over twice the rate of inflation!

All the candidates for sheriff and for County Executive agree, according to their responses printed in August’s Whatcom Watch, that “we need a new jail” (with two exceptions —Tom Anderson, who at least raised the possibility of an “upgrade” to the existing jail; and Doug Ericksen, who declined to respond to the candidates’ questionnaire). So now that Messrs. Ericksen and Louws (County Executive), and Messrs. Elfo and Harris (sheriff) are facing off in the election, let us see if there is any point of difference on this question between them.

Because I’m curious about this question: why should we even be considering building a new jail without understanding how incarceration costs are consuming an ever-increasing proportion of the county budget? What are the contributing factors to this trend? And what measures can be taken to stop the growth in incarceration expense, or to decrease it?

It is just unfathomable to me, as a taxpayer, that all candidates are in agreement that we need to build a new jail, without first engaging in public dialog about the hows and the whys and the wherefores. Especially considering that as at Dec. 31, 2010, only $3.8 million remained on the jail fund of the $17.9 million collected in the taxpayer-approved additional sales tax of 2004.

Every bed in the county lockup costs $27,272 per year ($2,272 per month) to operate, based on $12 million in total operating costs divided by an average of 440 inmates. It seems to me that the county should be focusing on two objectives: how can the number of inmates be decreased; and how can the cost of running the jail be decreased? Instead, they seem to be focused on two other objectives: where to locate a new jail; and how big will it be? (These are the explicit instructions to the Whatcom County Jail Planning Task Force formed by Executive Pete Kremen, and approved by council).

I hesitate to intrude on such an advanced level of groupthink, but someone must. The attached graphs are for background on one potential area to focus on in considering what factors are contributing to the extraordinary increase in incarceration costs in the county and perhaps an opportunity to reduce the number of inmates jailed for victimless “crimes.” §