Prison expansions bring small gains
Editor’s note: This is the third part of a multi-story series. This story originally appeared in the Oregon Business Magazine’s April issue. For more information on the Oregon Business Magazine, go to www.oregonbusi

Sunday, June 15, 2008 10:29 AM PDT

Ben Jacklet
SPECIAL to the Argus Observer

Ontario - The Oregon State Penitentiary was built in Portland in 1851 and relocated to Salem in 1866, where it remained the state’s only major prison for 100 years. Other facilities were built to supplement the penitentiary’s mission, but with the exception of a forest work camp in Tillamook, Oregon’s prisons were confined to Salem until 1985, when the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution opened in Pendleton.

Then came the great expansion: the Powder River Correctional Facility was completed 350 miles east of Salem in Baker City in 1989, followed by a barrage of prisons named after bodies of water rather than towns: Mill Creek, Columbia River, Shutter Creek, Snake River, Two Rivers, Coffee Creek and Warner Creek. With the opening of the Deer Ridge Correctional Institution in Madras last October, Oregon’s prison industry has grown to 14 facilities, 13,500 inmates, nearly 5,000 jobs and a DOC budget of $1.26 billion. The state now spends more on prisons than on higher education.

As the new prisons were built, wages in rural Oregon stagnated. So it’s not surprising that rural communities have embraced prisons and the jobs they bring. “There’s not a lot of industry knocking at your door in these rural areas,” says Oregon Employment Department regional economist Dallas Fridley, who tracks North Central Oregon. “Given the isolated nature of some of these communities, there may not be that many options for development beyond a prison.”

Employment and income numbers indicate that Oregon’s massive investment in prison expansion has brought local gains that are modest at best. The rural counties that gambled biggest on large prisons after the passage of Measure 11, Malheur and Umatilla, have continued to struggle. In Malheur County, non-farming jobs have increased slightly since the completion of the Snake River prison, but wages have been sluggish. Malheur County has the state’s highest poverty rate, its lowest median income, and is 31st out of 36 Oregon counties in earnings per job.

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The situation also looks grim in Umatilla, where the main street through downtown features boarded-up storefronts, vacant lots, run-down $25-a-night motels and sprawling trailer lots in varying stages of decay. In Umatilla County, state jobs grew after the Two Rivers prison opened in 2000, but private sector jobs fell and wages have held flat. The 430 employees of the Two Rivers Correctional Institution, by far the largest employer in the City of Umatilla, spend money locally, but the prison does not. Of the $56.6 million DOC spent to purchase goods and services for its prisons in 2007, only $29,928, or .05 percent, went to Umatilla businesses.

Local purchasing figures are only slightly higher in Ontario, an agricultural center for potatoes and onions. Mark Nooth, superintendent for the Snake River prison, explains the facility’s hands are tied when it comes to supporting local business.

“We’re too big,” Nooth says. “We serve 9,000 meals a day. Local businesses can do a portion of it, but we need someone who can handle the whole thing.”

Statewide, just 42.5 percent of the goods and services used in prisons are purchased from Oregon companies.

Then there is the matter of prison labor. In 1994, the same year  Oregon voters passed Measure 11, they also approved Measure 17, which requires inmates to work a 40-hour week. As a result, Oregon prisoners work inside and outside of their facilities, cleaning parks, sorting mail, printing business cards, building cabins and making telemarketing calls for private companies, including Timeline Industries and National Marketing Solutions.

In Ontario, minimum-security inmates sort potatoes bound for the Ore-Ida factory and spruce up the Four Rivers Cultural Center, the location of the Ontario Chamber of Commerce. In Umatilla inmate crews work at the Finley Butte Landfill and unload rail cars. for CRL.