Whatcom County’s new jail and Behavioral Care Center (BCC) may include design elements intended to improve incarcerated people’s mental health. Design planning for the project is expected to begin in August 2025.
The county hopes to have a final cost estimate by late 2026, and the facility could open in 2028 at the earliest. Whatcom County Chief Corrections Deputy Caleb Erickson, in collaboration with corrections, behavioral health and medical staff, has put together a wishlist of desired features for the new facility.
Plans for the new facility include trauma-informed design (TID) and biophilic design elements proven to reduce stress and feelings of depression, like natural lighting and pictures of nature. Trauma-informed design accounts for people’s past experiences when designing spaces that create a sense of safety, respect and privacy. Biophilic design utilizes natural elements, such as indoor plants and pictures of nature.
The new jail and BCC will be the long overdue replacement for the Whatcom County Jail, which was built in 1984. The Whatcom County Jail is bleak inside; moldy ceilings, only one rickety elevator, cramped quarters – the list goes on.
“It certainly feels like an oppressive environment,” said David Goldman, a counselor who teaches at the Whatcom County Jail. “It’s quite sad, it’s quite gross, dehumanizing.”
Some maintain that jails shouldn’t have nice things. Jails are supposed to be a form of punishment. But when something as basic and decent as natural lighting seems too “nice” for incarcerated people, your idea of punishment is too severe.
Inhumane conditions in jails help nobody. Not the public, the corrections officers who work in the jail and certainly not the incarcerated people living there.
Extreme punishment doesn’t equal less crime. Severe prison sentences don’t deter crime, and imprisonment can increase the likelihood of reoffending, according to the National Institute of Justice.
“Deterrence is important, I don’t think we necessarily want jail to be the time of anybody’s life, someplace where everybody wants to go,” Goldman said. “I think we’re so far from that, there’s really no danger if we give natural light, education, healthcare — I still think we’re well into punitive.”
TID creates feelings of safety in institutional spaces. Views of nature and residential characteristics are just two examples of TID. Both could be in the new facility.
In a City of Bellingham Justice Project Oversight and Planning Committee meeting on Jan. 16, 2025, Chief Corrections Deputy Caleb Erickson said the Sheriff’s Office wants the new facility to have carpet, less institutional furniture and nature photos.
TID has a proven positive effect on mental well-being. A 2023 study published in Psychological Services found statistically significant improvement in feelings of preparedness, hopefulness and safety in residents of homeless shelters after spending time in bedrooms made with TID.
At the Whatcom County Triage Center, five painted murals help patients feel more relaxed in what could otherwise feel like a sterile and institutional environment.
Biophilic design, which overlaps a little with TID, uses natural design elements to connect people with nature.
Biophilic design can be something as minor as a picture of a flower. A 2020 study published in the Journal of Environmental Psychology found that viewing an image of a flower following psychological stress reduced blood pressure and cortisol release.
It doesn’t take much to incorporate biophilic design into a project. Even just visual access to green infrastructure, like a view out of a window, can have a positive effect, Feerer said.
Goldman said his students benefited from pictures of flowers he put in his classroom.
“Everybody loved it,” Goldman said. “It just made the room for me, for all of us, it felt nicer to have pleasant pictures.”
For institutional projects, landscape architects typically only come in at the end to add finishing touches outside and around the entry area.
Michael Feerer, Founder and Board Member of Whatcom Million Trees, said that’s a faulty process and they should be involved from the start, regardless of the project. WMT is a local independent non-profit focused on addressing climate crises. WMT plans to plant over one million trees in Whatcom County between 2022 and 2026.
“If [a design] team is willing to include the landscape architect who thought about the rehabilitative and health benefits of green infrastructure from the get-go as they’re designing, there might be opportunities to integrate it more in the design,” Feerer said. “Hopefully, the architecture team will be thinking about green architecture as they move forward in the process.”
Sara Zain, a student at Western, has a regular study spot next to some big windows on the fourth floor of the Viking Union. Zain visits this spot nearly every day, partly because of the windows.
“It puts me in a good mood and I love looking outside sometimes when I don’t want to look at my computer,” Zain said.
If a college student feels better after a good window view, this access point to nature may benefit incarcerated people even more.
The proven psychological benefits of TID and biophilic design are desperately needed in the new facility. A 2022 survey of Whatcom County Jail inmates and staff found that 63% of 104 inmate respondents felt mental health services were extremely important. Additionally, 47% of 105 inmate respondents felt that help with mental health issues would have helped them avoid going to jail.
Conditions in the current Whatcom County jail are poor. Goldman compared the Whatcom County jail to a cave, a place deprived of color, sound and light. Few cells or dormitories have access to sunlight. Most inmates sleep and wake in a windowless room.
“I see and hear about inmates really coveting those tanks and cells that have some exposure to the outside world,” Goldman said.
Fresh air is also a rare commodity. The jail’s air is mostly recirculated. The air people breathe is recycled and fed back to them by the ventilation system. Recirculation traps allergens, dust and mold in the building and causes infectious diseases like COVID-19 to spread faster.
The only place where anyone can see outside or breathe fresh air is in the outdoor recreation room, which is unusable during some months of the year because of the weather.
The facility is beyond cramped, it houses around 190 people despite having a capacity of 148. Extra bunks and portable beds have been added to cells originally meant to house one person.
People experiencing mental health crises are thrown into padded cells, which are essentially “drunk tanks.”
The wishlist for the new facility includes “take ten rooms” for people in crisis. Other early design proposals include a central kitchen and educational opportunities.
Aesthetic improvements aren’t all the new facility needs to become a place where people can leave feeling better than when they came.
While aesthetics aren’t everything, they matter.
“Do you know anyone who lives in a house that’s painted completely grey with smudges all over it that can never actually be cleaned?” Goldman said. “That would be awful, no one would choose that.”
Hope Rasa (she/her) is a city news reporter for The Front this quarter. She is a second-year Western student majoring in news/editorial journalism. She enjoys running, hiking, reading and spending time with her cat. You can reach her at hoperasa.thefront@gmail.com.
