Washington Rural Jails Network
By Jennifer Schwartz, Jennifer Sherman, Clay Mosher, Christian Maynard, Megan Parks, Marisa Cervantes, Sandra Yokley.
Grant County Spotlight
Sheriff’s Offices in Ferry, Grant, Kittitas, Okanogan, and Whitman counties shared jail data for January 2015 to June 2020
Key Facts
- Failure to Appear was the dominant driver of pretrial incarceration and jail re-entry.
- Assault was a common mechanism for jail entry.
- Some 6 percent of jail admissions were drug-related
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.
One in four people were booked for “failure to appear”
- Failure to appear, 31%
- Department of Corrections, 11%
- Assault, 10%
- Warrant, 8%
- Drugs, 6%
Pretrial jail admissions had been gradually declining
Admissions averaged about 200 admissions from 2015 to 2019, with a sharp decline during the COVID-19 pandemic
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
- One booking
- Drugs, 6%
- DWLS, 2%
- DUI, 8%
- Assault, 20%
- Failure to Appear, 20%
- Fail to Appear, 16%
- Three or more bookings
- Theft, 6%
- Drugs, 5%
- DWLS, 10%
- DUI, 4%
- Assault, 7%
- Fail to Appear, 31%
Average # of pretrial days spent in jail by charge
- Average (all offenses), 10
- Drugs, 12
- Theft, 7
- Assault, 10
- Failure to Appear, 7
- DWLS, 9
- DUI, 5
% of people who spend 24 hours or less in jail pretrial by charge
- Average (all offenses), 36%
- Drugs, 33%
- Theft, 43%
- Assault, 59%
- Failure to Appear, 34%
- DWLS, 56%
- DUI, 68%
Most people booked into jail pretrial for Failure to Appear stayed longer than a day. In contrast, most people who were booked pretrial for driving under the influence were released within 24 hours.