Skagit Co. jail so overcrowded thousands of warrants unresolved

One North Sound county jail is so overcrowded that police can’t arrest thousands of criminals. The Skagit County Sheriff’s Office said there are between 7,000 and 8,000 unresolved warrants, and even with a new jail in the works, there is no quick fix.

The jail now holds about three times the number of inmates it was designed to back in the 1980s; each  cell was originally built for one person until a bunk was added to accommodate two, and now most of them have what’s called a boat on the floor for a third inmate.

“There is no doubt that Skagit County has been a place to come and commit crime,” Charlie Wend, jail commander, told us as we toured the current facility.

That’s because Wend knows that while the jail is overflowing, there are 40 times as many people who are supposed to be there.

“The thought of doing a warrant sweep sort of makes me nervous just because of the numbers pouring in,” Wend admitted.

While his deputies are tied up trying to manage an over-populated jail, they can’t serve thousands of warrants, and if they could, there would be no place to put the people they arrest anyway.

“I think the people have come to Skagit knowing that if you do a low-level offense, if you do a shoplifting, you’re not going to jail and so it’s been open season on our retailers, I would venture to say,“ Wend said.

“I would say it’s a huge problem,” Everett Parr agreed. He’s a manager at locally owned Ace Hardware in Mount Vernon.

Parr told us the store has seen theft spike so significantly in the past few years they’ve had to take drastic measures to protect their products.

“We lock up the tools, even right down to the individual items right here,” he explained, pointing to rows of small tools. But even that doesn’t deter the most determined of thieves.

“When you have somebody at night going over the fence and taking something as large as a major barbecue—that takes a lot of effort,” Parr continued.

Parr hopes that will change when a $60-million new jail is finished, but while construction is well underway, it’s still a year-and-a-half from completion.

Wend is counting the day and said criminals should, too.

“The thought they could be stopped and have a warrant and not go to jail—those days are numbered,” he concluded.

In the meantime the current jail is also a safety issue for the corrections deputies. There’s only one of them watching all five pods at one time, so the more overcrowded the jail is, the harder it is to keep track of every inmate.

Cox Media Group