CORVALLIS, Ore. — On a night when Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were duking it out on national television for a presidential nomination, Scott Jackson and David Grappo were trading jabs at the downtown Corvallis library over whether Benton County needs a new jail.
More than 80 people skipped the Democratic presidential debate Tuesday evening to attend a Corvallis League of Women Voters-sponsored showdown between Jackson, the county sheriff and leading proponent of the jail plan, and his archrival Grappo, who formed a political action committee to fight the proposal.
The men have squared off a number of times already over Measure 2-91, the $25 million bond measure on the Nov. 3 ballot. (With interest and other expenses, the total cost of the project would be about $36 million.) If approved, the county will build a 112-bed jail with a 20-bed work release center in Philomath to replace the current 40-bed jail next to the county courthouse in downtown Corvallis.
Grappo argued that a new jail is not needed because the community is already safe, as evidenced by insurance company ratings and city surveys that consistently rank Corvallis among the safest cities in the country. He also pointed to the county’s low recidivism rate, which measures how many offenders wind up back in jail after being released.
Jackson countered that those numbers can be misleading. For instance, he said, in one recent year Corvallis had 64 violent crimes compared with 40 in Albany. He acknowledged the county’s low recidivism rate but said that only took felony convictions into account, no matter how many misdemeanors an offender might rack up.
The jail is in better repair than county officials would have us believe, Grappo insisted, with virtually no documentary evidence to support the claim that buried pipes make plumbing repairs excessively costly or that the roof is falling in. He also noted that periodic audits have repeatedly found the jail safe and secure.
Jackson responded that the current jail was built in 1976 as a stopgap facility when the expectation was that a large, regional jail would be built in the near future, a plan that never came to pass. The result, he said, was a poorly designed jail that is inefficient to manage and long ago exceeded its capacity.
While the county argues a larger jail would make the community safer by cutting down on the number of inmates released early due to space constraints, Grappo pointed out that only relatively low-level offenders qualify for the program. He also cited statistics showing half of those cut loose early get just one day shaved off their sentences, with the average running about 2 to 3 days.
“We can spend $36 million to keep those people in jail one or two or three days more,” he said. “What a waste of resources that would be.”
Jackson responded that criminals are much more likely to commit more crimes when they understand they could be released early or might never go to jail at all because there’s no bed available.
“We’ve got a system that’s broken,” he said. “We’re hampered by our inability to give meaningful sanctions.”
Grappo mocked the county’s claim that a larger jail would cut down on repeat offenses by ensuring that there were always beds available for them to serve their sentences.
“What they’re saying is this: In order to have fewer people in jail, we have to put more people in jail.”
Jackson fired back that the lack of jail beds ties the justice system’s hands.
“Our judges are unable to sentence someone to a 5- or 10-day sentence with any assurance that they’re going to go to jail,” he said. “We’re in trouble, folks.”
Grappo cast doubt on the county’s claims that a larger jail would enable it to offer rehabilitation programs to help inmates better themselves, making them less likely to commit more crimes once they get out. He questioned how those services would be paid for, given minimal cost increases included in the county’s budget projections, and argued that most jail stays are too short for such programs to do any good.
“I don’t see any dollars in there to manage the (rehabilitation) program,” he said.
Jackson responded that many of those services would be provided at no additional cost by the Parole and Probation Division, which already operates post-release rehabilitation programs. And he said some inmates will inevitably keep coming back to jail over and over again because they lack the basic skills to function in society.
“We release them without giving them any tools or skills to change their ways,” he said. “We have years and years and years of proof that warehousing them without giving them any rehabilitation doesn’t work.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
