Chuckanut Health Foundation
Community Health & Justice Data
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Whatcom County, Washington  ·  Data Initiative  ·  2026

Community health and justice data
for Whatcom County.

An interactive data initiative assembling primary-source indicators on economic hardship, early childhood, housing stability, and the justice system across Whatcom County. Built from public records and published research. Intended for policymakers, researchers, journalists, and community members who want to examine the underlying data themselves.

Prevention & Early Childhood Behavioral Health & Housing Public Safety & Justice
Why We Built This

Chuckanut Health Foundation works for better outcomes across our community. The people who end up incarcerated are, in the vast majority of cases, people whose lives have been shaped by poverty, mental health challenges, substance use, childhood trauma, and structural lack of opportunity. That complexity calls us to this work, because if we want a truly healthy community, we cannot address only the downstream symptoms.

We also know this: when a community has a shared, honest understanding of where things actually stand, it asks smarter questions. And communities move in the direction of the questions they ask.

We want those questions to be hopeful, optimistic, compassionate, kind, and accountable to each other and to the fabric of the community we share.

This is a beta data initiative under active development. If you see an error, have additional data, or want to flag an omission: info@chuckanuthealthfoundation.org
How to Read These Dashboards
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Each tile below is a dashboard Click any tile to open a full interactive dashboard in your browser. Use the category navigation above to jump to a specific topic area.
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Data is sourced from public records Sources are cited on every dashboard. The primary justice data comes from Whatcom County Sheriff's Office (WCSO) public booking records, deduplicated by booking number. Electronic Home Detention (EHD) check-ins are excluded.
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Bookings, charges, and people are different things One person can have multiple bookings. One booking can have multiple charges. Dashboards note which unit they are counting. When in doubt, look at the methodology note at the bottom of each dashboard.
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This is a beta project Figures and methodology are subject to revision. Each dashboard has a disclosure at the bottom. If you find an error, please email us.
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Chuckanut Health Foundation discloses its role Chuckanut Health Foundation's Executive Director serves as co-chair of the Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force (IPRTF). Every dashboard discloses this so readers can weigh that connection.
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Navigate between dashboards Every dashboard has a "Return to Home" link in the header. Use it to come back to this page and explore other dashboards.
Jail & Bookings
What the WCSO booking data shows about who is being booked, on what charges, and how trends have changed 2019-2025
Deep Dives
Detailed analysis of specific booking populations, charge categories, and justice system patterns
Booking Drivers
Booking Drivers: Warrants, Drugs & Housing
A four-module analysis of the categories driving the 2023-2025 booking increase: warrant bookings, drug charges following SB 5536, bookings in categories associated with housing instability, and a breakdown by arrest-origin agency.
Charge Composition
Who Is in the Jail
How to read the charges database correctly: deduplication methodology, most-serious-charge analysis, warrant composition, and the distinction between bookings, charges, and people. Addresses common misreadings of the raw data.
System Analysis
What Drives Jail Population
The two variables that determine jail size: booking rate and average length of stay. How case processing, court capacity, pretrial services, and behavioral health capacity each affect average daily population. Includes the current booking restriction thresholds.
Warrant AnalysisNew
Warrant Bookings Deep Dive
1,213 warrant-only bookings in 2025. What warrants are, Failure to Appear (FTA) vs. FTC, underlying charges (Theft 3rd, Assault 4th, Trespass lead the list), and why the data cannot distinguish summons FTA from pretrial release FTA. Includes Prosecuting Attorney's Office feedback and context on the 2025 booking restriction changes.
Driving ChargesNew
Driving Charges Deep Dive
45.3% of all 2025 bookings involved a driving charge, 2,148 total. DUI (1,028 primary bookings), DWLS by all three degrees with legal definitions, co-charge patterns, and agency breakdown including Washington State Patrol (WSP)'s distinctive 92% driving-charge rate.
Patterns & StoriesNew
Charge Patterns, Recidivism & Human Stories
Top 10 charges for single, double, triple, and quad-charge bookings. The 156-charge booking explained. Top recidivating charges within-year and cross-year. Five anonymized pattern archetypes drawn from the 30 most-booked individuals 2023-2025: the DUI escalator, survival crime cycling, Department of Corrections (DOC) supervision pipeline, unmet behavioral health, and Domestic Violence (DV) order violations.
Recidivism
Who Returns to the Jail
Within-year and cross-year return rates 2019-2025. Charge profiles of individuals who return, concentration analysis (top 10% account for 24% of bookings), return rates by agency, and WSU's historical recidivism trend 2015-2019.
78-80%
do not return same year
35%→18%
recidivism 2015→2019 (WSU)
Charge CategoriesNew
What People Are Booked For
Five categories: crimes against persons, crimes of endangerment (DUI and related), crimes against property, crimes against public order, and crimes of poverty. Every charge named, no "Other" buckets. Includes the rare charges tab with all 199 bookings accounted for individually.
Jurisdiction ProfilesNew
Repeat Contacts by Jurisdiction
For each law enforcement jurisdiction in Whatcom County, the five individuals with the most bookings across 2023-2025. Each booking shown with charges, disposition, and estimated length of stay. Eight tabs: Bellingham PD, Whatcom SO, Ferndale PD, Lynden PD, Blaine PD, Everson/Nooksack, Lummi PD, WSP.
Long Stay AnalysisNew
Why DWLS 3rd and FTA Warrants Stay So Long
The two categories with the largest gap between median and mean length of stay. 89% of long-stay DWLS 3rd cases have no violent felony charge. 83% of long-stay FTA Warrant cases have no violent felony charge. Every co-charge named, with a direct answer to the "these are violent people" claim.
Prevention & Community Conditions
Economic hardship, early childhood, housing, homelessness, and what the research shows about upstream investment
Prevention Research & Chuckanut Health Foundation Programs
What the Research Shows About Prevention, and What Chuckanut Health Foundation Is Doing
A summary of research on prevention approaches, including Heckman's early-childhood return-on-investment work and ACE research, alongside Chuckanut Health Foundation's five program areas across the full lifespan: Healthy Children's Fund, All Hands Whatcom opioid response, the Lummi reefnet model of wellness, aging well, and civic belonging.
Policy & Finance
The legal and financial framework governing the justice facility, ILA, and upstream investment commitments
Legal Framework
Ordinance 2023-039: A Plain-Language Guide
What the ordinance establishing the public safety sales tax actually says, including the 50% upstream investment floor, the expansion trigger mechanism, and the live policy questions before the County Council as of April 2026.
Finance
City Budgets & ILA Contributions
Police budgets for ILA cities, ILA contributions to Fund 3502 (2024 actuals), and public safety sales tax revenue performance. Per PFM's January 2025 update, actual 2024 growth was -2.4% vs. the 5.0% assumption in the preliminary funding plan.
Context & Background
The history of planning, research, and community engagement leading to the current decision point
Archive
A Decade of Reports & Community Engagement
A chronological archive of 32 planning documents, research reports, and community engagement milestones from 2015 through April 2026. Includes the Vera Institute report, WSU analyses, Pasquo forecast, DLZ needs assessment, and the BCC recommendation.
Jail Planning Context
Dashboards specifically built to inform the April 2026 County Council facility decision and the ongoing implementation plan conversation
Decision ContextNew
Top 5 Things to Know Before April 28
Five findings from the public booking record that matter most for the facility size decision: bookings vs. crime trends, what drove the surge, who returns and why, short stays vs. long stays, and what analysis is still missing before a commitment is made.
Operational & FiscalNew
Time, Cost, and What Drives the Bed Count
When arrests happen by category (DUI peaks at 3am, warrants at 1pm), estimated annual incarceration cost per charge category at $250/day sourced from county budget, bail and pretrial hold analysis, and the Average Daily Population (ADP) math that actually determines bed need.
Open QuestionsNew
Questions the Data Raises But Cannot Answer
17 questions organized into six categories: Missing Data, Cost and Resources, Policy Design, Equity, Diversion, and Community. Each grounded in a specific finding from the booking record. The questions a community making a $200M+ capital decision should be able to answer.
In Development
Dashboards currently being built, updated, or expanded based on community feedback
Coming Soon
Ferndale: Community Conditions
The upstream pipeline dashboard for Ferndale, the second-largest source of county jail bookings by arrest origin.
Coming Soon
Jail Sizing & Demand Analysis
The Pasquo forecast, DLZ needs assessment, and Behavioral Health Campus analysis assembled in one place for the April 28 County Council decision.
Coming Soon
ILA Investment Tracker
Real-time tracking of how the public safety sales tax revenue is being allocated between capital, operations, and upstream behavioral health and diversion programs.
Beta Project -- This data initiative is under active development. Figures and methodology are subject to revision. Errors or omissions: info@chuckanuthealthfoundation.org