Analysis details racial disparities among Whatcom County Jail inmate population

The new Whatcom County Jail has been a topic of conversation in Bellingham and beyond since its proposal over a decade ago. Discussions are ongoing about the jail’s design, its focus on behavioral health and its capacity.

But for Miriam Karamoko and the Whatcom Racial Equity Commission (WREC), there’s an underlying issue that also needs to be examined and addressed: racial disparities in the county’s criminal justice system.

Karamoko, who leads the WREC, also serves on a separate commission tasked with overseeing the implementation of the new jail. They said that as they work with others on the Justice Project Oversight and Planning (JPOP) Committee, questions have arisen about best practices and mapping future population needs for the jail.

Already, the jail is projected to need 480 beds by 2030, according to a preliminary analysis presented to the Whatcom County Council. However, Karamoko said factors like racial disparities need to be better taken into account in the planning process — especially if steps are going to be taken to reduce them.

The WREC is in the process of finalizing an analysis of the jail’s population demographics for 2023 and 2024 to present to the JPOP Committee and other stakeholders. The analysis compares the racial makeup of the jail to that of Whatcom County as a whole.

The results were in line with trends found nationwide: people of color were disproportionately represented in the criminal justice system.

Only 1% of Whatcom County’s residents are Black, according to the 2023 American Community Survey. However, data analyzed by the WREC found that Black people made up 8.4% of the jail’s population that same year. Similarly, Indigenous people accounted for 1.6% of the county’s population and 12.7% of the jail’s.

The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the jail and provided the data to the WREC, did not provide data on the jail’s Latino population. WCSO spokesperson Deb Slater said whether or not an individual in the jail is Latino is considered separate from their race under the National Crime Information Center code system for booking, which the jail uses. Instead, it’s classified in a different field under ethnicity.

Karamoko said they weren’t surprised by the results of the analysis.

Both personal experience and stories from community members highlighted what Karamoko described as over-policing in minority communities. If law enforcement is more concentrated in a certain area, they’re more likely to potentially encounter crimes there, leading to a higher percentage of people of color in jail, Karamoko said.

National studies have found that traffic stops also disproportionately impact Black and Latino drivers. According to one analysis of almost 100 million traffic stops nationwide, police regularly stop Black and Latino drivers more than white drivers. These same groups were more likely to have their vehicles searched.

The study also found that Black drivers were less likely to be stopped at night, when a driver’s race is much more difficult for police to identify.

Disparities beyond 2023

While there has not been an official Census survey since 2023, the WREC also looked at jail population data from 2024. It found that 7.8% of the jail’s population was Black and 12.5% was Indigenous that year.

Karamoko noted that, although unofficial, projections show that Whatcom County’s Black population is decreasing; and if anything, the disparity index for Black people in Whatcom County Jail may be growing wider.

The Bellingham Herald analyzed the racial makeup of the main jail and work center as of the morning of Sept. 2 to get a snapshot of who was incarcerated in 2025. This data was compiled using the Whatcom County Jail roster and information from VINELink, a national victim notification network that supplies information on offenders at facilities nationwide.

Information on VINELink is publicly accessible, and each detainee’s profile on VINELink is linked in the jail’s roster. The profiles include custody status, age, race and gender.

The VINELink system queries the WCSO’s records management system every 15 minutes, according to Slater. She said data inputted by deputies into a public safety software is used to populate VINELink’s information on offenders’ race and ethnicity.

Analysis of the data from VINELink found that — excluding those whose race was unknown — people of color made up about a quarter of the jail’s population. About 10% of the total jail population at this time was Black, and more than 13% was Indigenous.

Additionally, 15% of the jail’s population was Latino, independent of race. Census data found Latino people make up 10% of Whatcom County’s residents as a whole.

The amount of time that the jail’s population had spent in custody as of Sept. 2 also varied depending on race. White people had spent a median time of 41 days in jail since their arrest, while Black individuals had spent a median of 52 days in custody. That same metric was 28.5 days for Indigenous people and 72.5 for Latino people.

These numbers do not take specific charges or their severity into account; however, analysis shows that most people in the jail were not there on charges related to violent felonies or sex crimes. The WREC Data Analysis and Justice Committee is in the process of analyzing the frequency of different charges and the demographics of who’s arrested on them.

All of this data will be brought to the WREC as a whole to get feedback, as well as to the JPOP Committee and county executive’s office. Karamoko said they hope that this data will spark a larger conversation about what they see as a need to focus more on the behavioral health aspect of the new jail.

Why do these disparities exist?

Racial disparities in the criminal justice system are not unique to Whatcom County. And to understand why they exist here and beyond, Western Washington University Professor Ceci Lopez said one has to look all the way back to the country’s founding.

Lopez, who directs the Center for Law, Diversity and Justice at WWU’s Fairhaven College, said the colonization of the U.S. by Europeans “set the tone” for who would and would not have a voice in government and American society at large. Namely, Lopez said that white men were at the top of the “hierarchy of importance.”

“The perspectives of who is and who is not a part of the system has a tremendous impact down the road to our present day,” Lopez said.

In terms of the criminal justice system and the racial disparities within it, Lopez pointed to the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and involuntary servitude “except as a punishment for crime” when someone has been “duly convicted.”

Lopez said that some plantation owners viewed this clause as a loophole to continue forcing former slaves to complete free labor. The government also profited from the “leasing” of these workers.

“The echoes of those systems still prevail,” Lopez said.

Experts agree that racial biases against Black, Indigenous and Hispanic individuals are still present today, and apparent in institutions like policing and jails.

“Those of us … who cannot be identified as a white majority constantly receive this message that we do not belong in the community,” Lopez said.

Still, Lopez is hopeful for change. She said the crux of her research centers on the idea of seeing the legal system as a “vehicle for healing” rather than punishment. Instead, the focus would be on addressing the root causes of crime and repairing harm done to the community.

“I’m convinced that we will get there because we will have to,” Lopez said. “What we have is totally unsustainable.”