BMN File Photo - Bellingham Tower. Photo by Fernando Gonzalez
BELLINGHAM, Wash. — Thousands of people passed through the Whatcom County Jail system last year, but a closer look at the numbers shows the overall booking count tells only part of the story.
Whatcom County recorded 4,860 jail bookings involving 3,609 people during 2025, according to county data reviewed by Bellingham Metro News. The difference between those two numbers reflects one of the most noticeable patterns in the data: some people were booked into the jail more than once during the year.
After removing administrative and nonphysical records for a separate booking-level analysis, 4,743 physical bookings remained. DUI, assault-related offenses, driver-license violations and warrants accounted for a substantial share of those bookings.
DUI was the largest single category identified in that analysis.
Of the 4,743 cleaned bookings, 1,029 involved DUI, representing about 21.7% of the total. Approximately 89% of the DUI bookings analyzed resulted in the person being released within 24 hours.
Assault-related charges appeared in 723 bookings, or about 15.2%, while roughly 554 bookings involved driver-license-related offenses such as driving with a suspended or revoked license.
Those categories can overlap. A person booked for DUI, for example, could also face a suspended-license charge or another offense during the same booking.
The numbers also should not be confused with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office annual offense totals. One jail booking can contain several charges, so the number of individual offenses recorded by the county can be considerably higher than the number of booking events.
The Sheriff’s Office counted 1,420 DUI offense entries during 2025, up from 1,251 in 2024 and 1,218 in 2023. Another 20 felony DUI entries were listed separately for 2025.
Fourth-degree assault was also among the most commonly recorded offenses, with 624 entries during 2025. Another 209 fourth-degree assault entries involved failure-to-appear warrants.
Some warrant and driving-related categories rose considerably from the previous year.
Failure-to-appear entries connected to third-degree driving with a suspended or revoked license increased from 119 in 2024 to 456 in 2025. Controlled-substance possession entries listed by the county as known possession increased from 54 to 247 over the same period.
Bellingham accounts for large share of bookings
Bellingham Police Department accounted for more Whatcom County Jail bookings than any other individual law enforcement agency during 2025.
BPD recorded 2,163 bookings, compared with 1,780 during 2024.
The Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office recorded 1,353 bookings in 2025, up from 1,211 a year earlier.
Washington State Patrol accounted for 367 bookings, Lummi Police recorded 319, Ferndale Police recorded 162 and Blaine Police recorded 137.
Those figures represent the arresting or booking agencies and should not be interpreted as showing where every underlying offense occurred.
Repeat bookings make the raw number look different
The difference between 4,860 bookings and 3,609 people is particularly important when looking at the jail data.
A booking represents an entry into the jail system, not necessarily a new person.
Someone arrested and booked twice during the same year is counted twice in the booking total, while still representing one individual.
The 2025 data showed a group of people returning to the jail multiple times during the same calendar year, meaning a relatively smaller number of repeat bookings contributed to the overall volume.
This is also why Bellingham Metro News is not presenting the jail booking total as a count of 4,860 separate offenders.
The Sheriff’s Office itself cautions that individuals can be booked multiple times and that annual booking totals should be interpreted as jail activity rather than a unique-person count.
What the 2026 numbers are showing
The available 2026 information provides another look at how the pattern is developing, although the current year cannot yet be directly compared with the completed 2025 dataset.
Whatcom County continues to publish booking information throughout 2026, while the county’s public criminal-justice data system includes current and historical jail information.
Because 2026 remains an incomplete year, Bellingham Metro News is not comparing the current raw total directly against the full 4,860 bookings recorded during all 12 months of 2025.
There is also another limitation: an individual who was booked during 2025 and returns to jail in 2026 cannot be identified as a same-year repeat booking using a simple calendar-year comparison. Cross-year returns require a separate longitudinal analysis.
That distinction matters when looking at whether repeat jail contact is continuing into 2026.
One clearer year-over-year comparison is available through Bellingham Police Department’s DUI figures.
By March 7, 2025, Bellingham police had made 85 DUI arrests since the beginning of that year, compared with 53 during the same period in 2024.
By March 12, 2026, BPD reported 65 DUI arrests since Jan. 1.
That means the early-2026 figure was below the unusually high pace reported during the opening months of 2025, although it still represented dozens of impaired-driving arrests during roughly the first 10 weeks of the year.
The city also continued using additional impaired-driving patrols around periods such as St. Patrick’s Day.
Those city figures are Bellingham Police arrest totals and are separate from countywide jail-booking statistics.
Whatcom and Skagit show different jail systems
Looking south to neighboring Skagit County provides some regional context, although the counties publish their jail information differently enough that a direct one-to-one statistical comparison should be made carefully.
Skagit County operates the Community Justice Center in Mount Vernon and publishes a current inmate roster as well as a daily booking report.
Unlike Whatcom County’s completed annual Jail Use Report, Skagit County’s public booking system is largely presented as continuously updated operational data. Its booking report shows people entering the jail during the most recent reporting cycle, while its inmate roster reflects the population currently being held.
The Skagit jail data also show many of the same general categories appearing in the system, including DUI, assault, warrants, suspended-license offenses and investigative holds.
For example, Skagit County’s publicly available 2026 booking and roster records include DUI citation arrests, felony DUI cases, suspended-license charges and people being held on warrants.
But comparing a single day or current Skagit jail population with Whatcom County’s annual total would be misleading.
The two systems are useful for regional context, but the reporting periods and methodology must be aligned before determining whether one county actually has a higher booking rate or a larger share of any particular offense.
Population also matters. Raw booking counts alone do not account for the difference in population between Whatcom and Skagit counties.
Bookings are not the same thing as the crime rate
The figures also come with an important limitation.
Jail bookings do not measure crime in the same way as reported-offense or victimization statistics.
Booking numbers can move up or down because of changes in policing, warrants, court procedures, jail policies, charging decisions and whether someone is booked into jail or cited and released.
One person can also account for several bookings.
Because of those factors, an increase in jail bookings does not automatically mean crime increased by the same percentage, and a decline does not necessarily mean fewer crimes occurred.
The figures instead provide a look at how frequently local law enforcement agencies are bringing people into the jail system and which types of offenses are most commonly associated with those bookings.
Whatcom County has placed an increasing amount of criminal-justice information online in recent years. In April 2026, the county launched a Justice Project data-tracking site intended to bring together information about incarceration, courts and the broader criminal-justice system while a more comprehensive dashboard is developed.
For residents trying to understand what is happening locally, the distinction between an arrest, an offense, a jail booking and an individual person remains critical.
The 2025 numbers show nearly 4,900 booking events, but they involved substantially fewer individual people. DUI continued to stand out as one of the largest categories, while repeat bookings, warrants and license-related cases accounted for another significant portion of activity moving through the Whatcom County Jail.
About the Author
Discover more from Bellingham Metro News
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
