The Marion County Sheriff’s Office is temporarily shuttering its transition center and transferring deputies to the county jail to address a staff shortage.
The transition center is a minimum-security alternative to jail where several dozen residents work jobs or do community service while nearing probation. It’s located at 4000 Aumsville Highway S.E., near the Marion County Jail.
The work includes abating mold, cleaning the shower area and replacing exhaust fans.
Inmate crews from that facility will continue their work at the jail, according to Detective Jeremy Schwab, sheriff’s office spokesman. The agency must operate the jail under state law.
The sheriff’s office planned last year on reopening a jail unit that’s been closed for over a decade to put in 55 new beds, bringing the jail’s capacity to 470. The expansion would have come with a nearly $2 million annual price tag.
County officials for years have floated the idea to reopen the jail’s “G-Pod” after it closed in 2011 due to budget cuts.
The expansion is intended to help lighten overcrowding at the jail, which is regularly operating at capacity and currently only able to lodge people facing the most serious of charges.
But the sheriff’s office has struggled to hire employees to run the expanded facility, according to Marion County Sheriff Nick Hunter.
Hunter told the Marion County Board of Commissioners at their public meeting on July 10 that his agency has positions for 12 corrections deputies at the transition center, two of which are vacant.
He said moving the 10 deputies would reduce vacancies at the jail to about three or four, and it would allow his agency to open the 55 new beds.
Commissioners Kevin Cameron and Colm Willis at the meeting approved the temporary closure of the transition center. Commissioner Danielle Bethell was absent.
WATCH: Marion County commissioners’ July 10 meeting
Hunter told the commissioners that the sheriff’s office has not been making full use of the transition center, which has 144 beds. The agency is currently using around 30-50 of those beds.
The sheriff said the closure will allow them to reassess how best to use the facility with more of a focus on the addiction crisis in Marion County. He said that would include bringing in treatment providers for people with addictions who are awaiting trial.
“For those folks, to try and improve livability, we cannot simply solve problems by putting someone in jail because three days later, when they come out, if you haven’t addressed the root cause of why they’re in jail, then they’re probably going to go back to the same type of lifestyle or offending again,” he said at the meeting.
Hunter said the sheriff’s office is preparing to have a plan for the transition center’s future within three months.
Then, he hopes to begin recruiting another three months later to eventually reopen the facility, this time as “the stabilization center.”
Hunter said at the meeting that the jail’s staff shortage has been taxing on employees, who are having to work overtime shifts with no time off.
When the jail is low on staff, that means more frequent lockdowns with less time for people in custody to spend outside of their cells.
“We have a lot of violent offenders in the jail,” Hunter said at the board meeting. “With the current capacity, every day, we are having to make very difficult decisions when someone needs to go into the jail that often results in also someone having to come out of the jail.”
The sheriff said that the expansion would allow his agency to make fewer of those decisions. “It allows us to hold more people accountable for their actions in their jail while they’re a part of the criminal justice system and part of the adjudication process to find final resolution,” he said. “It really puts us in a better place to keep our community safe.”
Meantime, Hunter said that the sheriff’s office has contracted with a third party to help create a new recruitment plan.
Contact reporter Ardeshir Tabrizian: [email protected] or 503-929-3053.
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Ardeshir Tabrizian has covered criminal justice and housing for Salem Reporter since September 2021. As an Oregon native, his award-winning watchdog journalism has traversed the state. He has done reporting for The Oregonian, Eugene Weekly and Malheur Enterprise.
