Features and News

(Oct. 28, 2015) Once upon a time, there was a bucolic county named Benton, whose major city was Corvallis, so named by the Oregon Legislature in the 1880’s and meaning “heart of the valley."

Located in Corvallis, adjacent to our historic courthouse, there is an ugly, gray concrete structure we call a jail. Built 40 years ago, it resembles jails of the 1880s.

Benton County needs to incarcerate 80 prisoners on any given day, but the current jail holds only 40, and typically fewer, because the jail was built to house only 27. According to the U. S. Department of Justice, 64 percent of jail inmates suffer from mental illness: depressive, bipolar, schizophrenia, delusion and psychotic disorders. And many bring with them co-occurring substance abuse disorders. County jails have a constitutional responsibility to provide treatment for these high-needs individuals.

A few of these mentally ill prisoners have committed violent crimes or are a danger to the community or themselves and must be incarcerated. Jail is not the best place for most mentally ill people, but it has become the default residence for individuals requiring mental health residential placement and treatment services. Unless and until we develop community-based mental health facilities jail will remain their home. We need programs to treat these individuals and space in which to conduct the programs. We do not have treatment space in our current facility.

Some arrestees are denied immediate access to the jail because it is frequently full. They often end up being released rather than incarcerated. Our current jail resembles an inn; some sentenced offenders must make a future reservation to get in. One way new guests are accommodated is by kicking out current guests before their sentence is up to make room, and that is done regularly.

The staff of the inn, well trained though they are, struggles to find a place to put new guests and with what to do with them once they have them. So the sheriff loads some of them into motorized vehicles and takes them off to other counties whose inns are not full and who are delighted to receive additional guests paid for by us, the taxpayers.

We need a modern jail that provides space for those who are incarcerated or who need to be incarcerated. We need space to conduct evidence-based reformation programs: anger management, sex offender treatment, inpatient substance abuse treatment, cognitive rehabilitative programming, mental health and pre-release planning. These offenders will all be returning to the community.

We need a jail that is open 24-7 to accommodate our police officers and deputies and those who belong in jail. We have the opportunity on Nov. 3 to move the Benton County criminal justice system out of the 1880s and into today’s world. Ballot Measure 2-91 will provide us with a modern, functional jail. Our corrections and mental health professionals sorely need this resource.