Ferry County

Washington Rural Jails Network

By Jennifer Schwartz, Jennifer Sherman, Clay Mosher, Christian Maynard, Megan Parks, Marisa Cervantes, Sandra Yokley.

Ferry County

Sheriff’s Offices in Ferry, Grant, Kittitas, Okanogan, and Whitman counties shared jail data for January 2015 to June 2020

The project had several goals

• Gather and analyze administrative jail data from select rural counties in Washington.
• Build knowledge of specific factors affecting jail population trends.
• Gain perspective of justice-involved people and justice staff via interviews
• Share lessons from research and data analysis with local representatives and stakeholders.

Key Facts

• Failure to Appear was the dominant driver of pretrial incarceration and jail re-entry.
• Driving with a suspended license was a common mechanism for jail entry.
• Most (66%) pretrial jail bookings for assaults were domestic violence related.
• Some 6 percent of pretrial jail admissions were drug-related

One in four people were booked for “failure to appear”

• Failure to appear, 23%
• Assault, 16%
• DUI, 12%
• DWLS, 10%
• Drugs, 6%

Jail admissions fell during the start of the pandemic

Admissions ranged from 10 to 80 per month

Rural Context:

Rural counties face resource constraints, staffing shortages; limited health, mental health, and substance treatment services; and scant communication, transportation, and legal infrastructure.

Failure to appear is a significant driver of reentry

Most people booked into jail pretrial for Failure to Appear stayed longer than a day. Most (52%) jailed for DUI were released within 24 hours.

What is driving jail populations in Ferry County, Washington?

May 2022

Top findings from Ferry County

• 61 percent of jail admissions were for either community custody (probation) violations while under Department of Corrections (DOC) supervision (26 percent) or due to bed rental contracts with other agencies (35 percent, although this proportion has dropped in recent years). Pretrial admissions accounted for 28 percent of jail admissions.
• The leading reason people went to jail pretrial (35 percent) was for inability to navigate the local criminal legal system, such as failure to appear in court or reinstate a driver’s license, rather than charges against people or property.
• Assault charges are the second most common reason (16 percent). A majority of assault bookings included charges of domestic violence (66 percent of all assault charges). Most domestic violence assault charges were misdemeanors (82 percent for women and 94 percent for men).
• About 6 percent of pretrial jail admissions were for drug-related charges.
• 78 percent of people arrested and booked into Ferry County Jail did not return on new charges

Ferry County, in rural Northern Washington, borders Canada
to the north. The Colville National Forest takes up much of
the northern part of this mountainous county. The southern
boundary overlaps the Colville Indian Reservation. Ferry
County’s population is 16.6 percent Native American and
73.0 percent white according to recent Census data. The
county is one of the least populous in the state, with just
over 7,000 people. Timber and mining have dominated the
local economy. Recreation and tourism are a growing part.

The current Ferry County Jail in Republic, WA, was built
in 1976 with the capacity for 92 and up to 110 people
during an emergency. The jail, managed by Ferry County
Sheriff’s Office, also houses people on community custody
(probation) violations under supervision of Washington State
Department of Corrections. Ferry County Jail also maintains
bed rental contracts with nearby counties. This fact sheet
presents some of the key trends in the Ferry County
jail population, based on research done by Washington
State University faculty and graduate students and the
Washington Rural Jails Network, using jail administrative
records from January 2016 to August 2021 requested from
and provided by the Ferry County Sheriff’s Office.

Monthly jail admissions in Ferry County declined over the
five-and-a-half year period studied. Admissions numbered
around 55-60 per month in 2016 and 2017. By 2019,
admissions totaled around 30 per month. Throughout
the COVID-19 pandemic, starting in March 2020, jail
admissions were fewer than 20 per month. After a low
of 7 admissions in both March and April 2021, admissions
started increasing. About 28 percent of admissions to jail
were pretrial, 26 percent were admitted for a community
custody violation under DOC supervision, and 35 percent
were admitted to be held for another jurisdiction. A smaller
proportion of people (11 percent) entered the jail to serve
time under a sentence.

REASONS FOR JAIL ADMISSIONS

61 percent of people booked into Ferry County Jail were being held for another county jail or for the state Department of Corrections.

• One-third (35 percent) entered Ferry County Jail to be held on behalf of nearby counties with bed rental contracts. One contracting county was out-of-state.
  • Holds declined significantly in 2018 after the out-of-state bed rental contract ended. The overall share of admissions due to holds fell from about half of all admissions in the 2016-2018 period to one-fifth in 2019 and 2020 and to 10 percent during the pandemic in 2021.
• Washington State Department of Corrections houses individuals for community custody violations in the Ferry County Jail. This group accounted for 26 percent of Ferry County Jail admissions.
• Ferry County Jail has very few beds rented to federal agencies.

The remaining 39 percent of jail admissions originated mainly from within Ferry County, and most of these individuals were booked pretrial (72 percent).

Among those booked pretrial, 35 percent were admitted for failure to appear (FTA) in court or for not meeting other system requirements (such as paying a fine or reinstating a driver’s license), rather than on charges for an offense against persons or property.

• The most common reason for booking into Ferry County Jail pretrial was for failure to appear in court. This was the top, or most serious, charge in 23 percent of all pretrial jail bookings.
  • Of all those with a failure to appear charge among their booking charges (24 percent of pretrial bookings), failure to appear was the most serious charge for 96% of people. Only 4% of people were booked on a more serious charge along with failure to appear.
  • Rural residents may fail to appear in court for various reasons: they don’t receive legal notifications nor any reminder, they may not understand complex legal documents, their overburdened defense lawyers are unable to help ensure clients appear in court, they face housing instability, they have difficulty securing transportation, they don’t trust the criminal legal system, and/or they can’t take time off from work and/or arrange for childcare.
• Ten percent of people booked pretrial into Ferry County Jail were admitted on charges of driving with a suspended or invalidated license (DWLS). DWLS can result from unpaid fines, traffic tickets, or child support payments due; failure to reinstate one’s license after suspension; or failure to appear for hearings or comply with conditions related to traffic infractions, among other reasons.

“I was paying off all my [driving-related] tickets and I was making monthly payments. Well, then, in 2015 when we had all the fires and stuff, where I was working, the owner’s house burned down in those fires. So she ended up closing the business. Well, during that time, I was helping out the fire victims—both me and the waitress that I worked with were helping out the fire victims and cooking for the elders and stuff, and I ended up getting evicted from my home because I was helping because I was the only person [here] that was helping everybody else… So we—I got evicted, so I ended up moving in…with my sister for a little while. And, you know, basically starting over. And I didn’t have any income at the time. So, they re-suspended my license.

Q So you just got behind on the bills, basically.

A Yeah, because everything kind of went up in smoke, literally.”

45-year-old white and Native American woman

• Another 2 percent of people were booked into jail pretrial for difficulties complying with system requirements other than failure to appear. These included assorted other legal system requirements, such as failures to pay fines and fees, pay child support, obey criminal justice system officials’ orders, properly register a car, or transfer a title.

Assault charges accounted for 16 percent of pretrial jail bookings in Ferry County. Of these, 71 percent were misdemeanors and 66 percent involved domestic violence charges.

• Domestic violence assault was the second-most common top charge for women booked into jail pretrial (14 percent) (after failure to appear) and the fourth-most common top charge for men booked into jail pretrial (9 percent). Most bookings for domestic violence assault for both men and women were misdemeanor-level charges (82 percent for women and 94 percent for men). Misdemeanor assaults do not result in severe bodily harm and do not involve a deadly weapon.

Driving under the influence (DUI) charges were twice as common as drug-related charges as the reason for people being booked pretrial into the Ferry County Jail.

• DUI was the top charge in 12 percent of bookings, whereas drug-related charges were the most serious in about 6 percent of pretrial bookings.

LENGTH OF STAY AND FREQUENCY OF BOOKINGS

Some 42 percent of people booked into jail pretrial in Ferry County were released within one day, yet the average length of stay was more than one week (9.9 days). Some who were in jail longer than one day had very long stays, which significantly increased the average length of stay. People held for community custody violations under Department of Corrections supervision had a slightly longer average length of stay, about 10.5 days.

Length of pretrial stay in Ferry County Jail varied by charge type. People booked on drug-related charges tended to have lengthier jail stays of over 12 days, longer than the overall average. Those booked for failure to appear—a minor charge and the most common pretrial charge in Ferry County—spent more than one week (8.9 days) in jail on average.

A minority of those who were booked into jail on charges of failure to appear (27%) or related to drugs (25%) were released within 24 hours. By contrast, more than half the people charged with driving under the influence (52%) or driving with a suspended license (56%) were released from jail within 24 hours. Although bond information is not analyzed in this study, the contrast may be due to more people in the latter two groups being released without bail and/or able to post bail.

Most people (78 percent) who were booked into Ferry County Jail pretrial did not return to the jail on new charges over the five-and-a-half year period (Jan 2016 – Aug 2021) the research team examined.

• Nearly one-third (31 percent) of all repeated pretrial jail admissions were due to failure to appear charges. This demonstrates that many repeat bookings stem from the challenges of meeting legal requirements during the pretrial process rather than new criminal charges.
• The 7 percent of people who were reincarcerated three or more times in Ferry County Jail accounted for 22 percent of all pretrial bookings over five-and-a-half years. This group—about 40 people—had a broad impact on jail trends in Ferry County. People cycling in and out of jail are more likely to experience homelessness, substance use, lack of stable income, and mental and physical health problems than the general population.3 Increased social services and/or assistance meeting legal-system obligations could have an outsize impact by helping them stabilize and meet their day-to-day needs and ultimately end the cycle of incarceration.

APPENDIX A – ADDITIONAL CHARTS

• Age at booking. The average age at arrest/booking was More than half of people were aged 35 or older when
  admitted to jail. Nearly one in ten people were under the age of 25 when booked.
• Jail admissions by gender. Women made up more than
  one-quarter of pretrial jail bookings into Ferry County Jail.
  Nationally, women’s presence in jails has been growing.
  
• Jail admissions by race and ethnicity. Like Ferry County’s population, most pretrial jail
  admissions were of white people (87 percent of pretrial admissions, 73 percent of population).
  Fewer than 3 percent of admissions were Hispanic/Latinx people (5 percent of county
  population). Seven percent were Native American (17 percent of the county population).
  Jail admissions of Hispanic/Latinx people, Native American people, and people with multi-racial/
  ethnic identities tend to be underestimated because jail staff may misclassify some people
  as white at admission. This tendency to underestimate is common in jails across the country.4
  Black people were 1 percent of jail admissions, same as the county population.
• Top charges for pretrial jail bookings: Failure to Appear in court (23 percent), Assault (16 percent,
  with 66 percent of those for domestic violence), Driving under the influence (12 percent), and
  Driving with License Suspended (10 percent).
  
• Most common domestic violence charge types. Assault (69 percent) was the most common
  top charge in cases involving domestic violence. Violating a protection order (19 percent), then
  malicious mischief and harassment (4 percent, each) were the next most common top charges in
  domestic violence cases.
  
• Multiple pretrial bookings. Most people were arrested and booked into Ferry County Jail only
  once during the observed period (78 percent). However, 7 percent experienced three or more
  pretrial jails stays over five and one-half years (January 2016 – August 2021).

APPENDIX B – METHODOLOGY

The findings in this brief come from analysis conducted by Washington State University faculty
and graduate students in the Rural Jails Research and Policy Network. The Ferry County Sheriff’s
Department provided requested data on all jail bookings (and releases) initiated between
January 1, 2016, and August 31, 2021. In total, the WSU team analyzed 2,668 bookings: in 1,617
booking incidents, people were admitted and held on behalf of a contracting county or the WA
DOC (probation violation), in 292 booking incidents, people were committed locally to serve a
sentence, and in 759 incidents (involving 550 individual people), they were booked pretrial.
The WSU team also conducted qualitative and ethnographic work; future reports will provide
more detailed findings. Quotes come from qualitative interviews conducted from August
2020 to August 2021 with people who had been held in Ferry County Jail at some point. In all,
researchers interviewed 37 people for this project who had spent time in rural Washington jails;
one had spent time in the Ferry County Jail. Interviews lasted approximately one to two hours
and were conducted by phone by WSU faculty. They were audio recorded and later transcribed
and analyzed for thematic patterns.

Endnotes

1 A 2021 law (SB 5226) eliminated mandatory suspension of license as a consequence for unpaid fines and fees; courts now have the option to suspend or revoke a license and must assess ability to pay.
2 Washington state requires police officers to make an arrest when they respond to a domestic violence call and have probable cause to believe that an incident of domestic violence or a violation of a no-contact order occurred in the last four hours. When an officer believes that more than one party is at fault, they are not required to make more than one arrest—typically, they will arrest only the party who appears to be the “primary aggressor.”
3 Madeline Bailey, Erica Crew, and Madz Reeve, No Access to Justice: Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness and Jail (New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2020), https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/no-access-to-justice.pdf; Jennifer Bronson, Jessica Stroop, Stephanie Zimmer, and Marcus Berzofsky, Drug Use, Dependence, and Abuse Among State Prisoners and Jail Inmates, 2007-2009 (Washington DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2017), https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/dudaspji0709.pdf; and Urban Institute, “Five Charts that Explain the Homelessness-Jail Cycle – and How to Break It,” September 16, 2020, https://www.urban.org/features/five-charts-explain-homelessness-jail-cycle-and-how-break-it.
4 According to a 2016 report, when people in prison had the opportunity to self-identify, a higher percentage of people reported Hispanic/Latinx origin or multiple races and fewer identified as non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic Black than reported in corrections department administrative data. See E. Ann Carson, Prisoners in 2016 (Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2018), 7, https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/p16.pdf.
5 The law that established this practice was an attempt to reduce the number of people in state prisons, so some were released under community custody. People who have to return to detention due to violating the conditions of community custody generally go to county jails, not state prisons. See Rev. Code Wa. Rev. Code Wa. §9.94A.701. DOC-supervised community custody is separate fromcounty-supervised probation.

For more information about this fact sheet, please contact the Washington Rural Jails Network at https://labs.wsu.edu/wrjn or Dr. Jennifer Schwartz, jennifer.schwartz@wsu.edu, WSU Department of Sociology, Pullman, WA 99164. The Washington Rural Jails Network is part of the Rural Jails Research and
Policy Network, a project at the Vera Institute of Justice, with funding
from Arnold Ventures.