People of under-represented communities and their advocates continue in struggle for services over jail / Noisy Waters Northwest

Click the image containing pages from “No New Jail in Whatcom County” to access the complete September 2023 online zine.

October 28, 2023 Dena Jensen

It’s closing in on a year ago since Whatcom County’s Justice Project evaluated their needs assessment process according to a toolkit provided by the Local and Regional Government Alliance on Race and Equity.

Continue reading

Whatcom jail locks up more unserved BIPOC people: Vote no on a 2023 tax for an unplanned new jail / Noisy Waters Northwest

Click the screenshot of a section on page 14 of the 2023 Whatcom County Justice Project Needs Assessment to access the information in the full document.

October 18, 2023 Dena Jensen

[Editors Note: I submitted this commentary to Cascadia Daily News two weeks ago on October 4, 2023, after they had published a three-week string of guest commentaries praising the 2023 ballot measure sales tax to build a new Whatcom County jail. After 2 more weeks of pro-jail-tax commentaries and finally, two jail-tax related ones today, one for it and one that opposed the tax, I noticed on the two published this morning there was an editor’s note on both, saying CDN would not be publishing any more guest commentaries about the jail tax, “with most relevant issues seemingly covered.” So here’s mine right back here in my own publication with issues related to the tax that seem relevant to me.]

Continue reading

Sales tax for new Whatcom jail requires working against incarceration reduction recommendation / Noisy Waters Northwest

October 11, 2023 Dena Jensen

This week there have been at least a couple of presentations of Washington State University’s independent review of progress on addressing the recommendations and strategies in the 2017 Vera Institute of Justice report. One was given to the Incarceration Prevention Task Force (IPRTF) at their special meeting held on Monday, October 09, 2023 at 9:00 a.m., and one to the Whatcom County Council Committee of the Whole at their meeting on Tuesday, October 10, 2023, at 2:15 p.m.

Continue reading

Comparison: sales-tax constant for Whatcom Executive is we may have too many funds for behavioral health services / Noisy Waters Northwest

Image of a chart used by Whatcom County Executive Satpal Sidhu’s remarks at the June 12, 2023 Whatcom County Incarceration Prevention and Reduction Task Force

October 22, 2023 Dena Jensen

🟥🟩Comparison of our County Executive’s remarks, one month apart, related to the amount of funding from the 2023 ballot measure sales tax that was to be made available for non-jail projects.🟥🟩

Continue reading