BELLINGHAM - Two criminal justice consultants presented a medley of suggestions to officials and the public Wednesday morning, Aug. 31, on how Whatcom County should transition from its old, dilapidated jail to a new facility.
Warren Cook and Mark Goldman, of the National Institute of Corrections, said the new jail should be located "in or just outside the city of Bellingham," because about 52 percent of felony arrests in the county are made by the Bellingham Police Department.
About 30 people attended the public meeting, which was held from 9 a.m. to noon at the Whatcom County Courthouse, and about a third of those were local officials.
The consultants were paid for by a federal grant that the Whatcom County Sheriff's Office applied for. They spent the last couple of days talking to judges, lawyers, police chiefs, sheriff's officials and people in the juvenile justice system.
Among other changes the consultants suggested:
• Shifting storage space at the Irongate work center to create a new 50-bed dormitory, taking some pressure off the main jail as it's being planned for and built.
• Hiring a full-time maintenance person to work exclusively with the sheriff's office and the jail. That person also would get familiar with the new jail as it's being built.
• Reinstalling TVs in the jail for local and educational programming. "The TVs are electronic Thorazine for the inmates," Cook said.
• Painting the main jail in bright colors using inmate labor, to decrease the drabness and to give inmates something to do.
• Setting up sound-absorbing panels on the walls of the cell blocks, for the sake of employees and inmates.
• Adhering closer to national standards throughout the county's corrections system. For example, to meet the standard, the amount of annual training employees get would need to be doubled from 20 hours to 40 hours.
Those standards, Cook admitted, were developed as ideals, without much consideration of the feasibility of the cost.
Suggestions from the audience that the current main jail be expanded into a nearby parking lot were dismissed, because the old facility isn't worth salvaging, the consultants said.
"It's not just that you need more beds," Goldman said. "You need more everything."
That means better infrastructure, a better booking area, better visibility of the cells and more staffing.
Goldman added that if the county built a new, temporary jail in a parking lot across the street, it would need to be at least 25 stories tall.
When asked how many inmates a 25-story jail would house, Goldman said between 1,000 and 2,000.
Sheriff Bill Elfo then tried to reassure the audience: "I don't envision us building a jail that's more than 600 beds at this time."
The current main jail is designed for 212 and regularly houses about 275 inmates.
And despite the consultants' suggestion that the long-term plan might be to build a criminal justice center at the new jail site, Elfo said the courts would be staying at the Grand Avenue location.
In 2004, voters approved a 1 cent sales-tax increase for every $10 spent to fund a new main jail, maintain the old one, and build and operate the minimum security work center.
Much of that money has gone to maintaining the old jail as the new facility is being planned.
Two possible sites for a new jail were named in previous consultant reports to the county: Both of them are located near the Bellingham International Airport.
