ROSEBURG, OR - The growth of Oregon's prison population will slow during the next decade as more inmates complete serving mandatory minimum sentences and are released, according to an analysis for the Legislature's two judiciary committees.

Suzanne Porter, a forecaster in the Office of Economic Analysis, found that the prison population has grown by 75 percent since 1995 but predicted that it will increase by only 21.4 percent in the next nine years. The 4.4 percent rate of growth in the 2005-07 biennium will decline to 3.3 percent by 2013-15, according to Porter's projections.

In a written analysis she prepared for a joint hearing of the judiciary committees in Roseburg on Wednesday, Porter said the driving force behind the growth of the prison population has been passage of Measure 11, the 1994 initiative that imposed long, mandatory minimum sentences for a large number of violent crimes, and an expansion of the Repeat Property Offenders law.
 
Porter said the state prison system takes in an average of 58 new Measure 11 inmates a month and releases 37 who have completed their sentences, a net monthly gain of 21 inmates. By 2015, she said, the number of Measure 11 inmates arriving at state prisons will increase slightly, to 64 a month, but inmate releases will grow to an average of 55 a month, a net gain of nine a month.

Porter said that without the policy changes that were enacted by the Legislature and by initiative, the state currently would need 4,743 fewer prison beds. Measure 11 accounts for almost 70 percent of the additional needed beds, while the Repeat Property Offenders law accounts for almost 27 percent, according to the analysis.

Porter said Measure 11's largest impact was the length of sentences imposed under its terms. She said the number of Measure 11 inmates entering the system has declined but that their median sentence is almost 50 months longer than those served by inmates convicted of the same crimes before Measure 11 was passed.

The Repeat Offenders law was passed in 1995 and expanded in 1999 to include identity theft and again in 2001 to cover felony forgery and related crimes. The law includes a presumptive minimum sentence of 19 months in prison for repeat offenders.

One result of the law's expansion has been a spike in the number of women entering the prison system, Porter reported. She said that since 2003, women have made up one-third of new prison inmates convicted of identity theft or felony forgery and almost all were repeat offenders, an "unusually high participation rate."

In another presentation for the committees, Nathan Allen, the Department of Corrections' planning and budget administrator, said that about 20 percent of Oregon prison inmates have severe or high mental illness treatment needs, an increase from 11.8 percent in 1999. If the rate remains at 20 percent, the system is projected to have almost 3,208 inmates with severe mental health needs by 2016, he said.

Allen said the cost of mental health treatment in prison ranges from $1.14 a day for inmates with moderate problems to $10.28 for the most severe cases.
Sen. Ginny Burdick, D-Portland, chairwoman of the interim Senate Judiciary Committee, said after the hearing that the large number of women going to prison for identity theft crimes could have a "severe" impact on Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the state prison for women in Wilsonville.

"If you look at the trajectory of the (Repeat Property Offenders) category, it's pretty alarming," she said in a telephone interview.

Corrections Department officials said Coffee Creek is slightly over capacity now but will add 108 beds in September and 216 more beds by 2011.
Burdick said she will also urge the next session of the Legislature to consider what to do about an aging prison population. She said that between 2000 and this year, the number of inmates older than 60 increased from 223 to 467, a rise of 109 percent.

Burdick said many of these inmates are serving long or indefinite sentences without parole for the most serious crimes and become a financial strain on the state as they develop health problems.

"These are not nice people," Burdick said, "but if they are unable to commit another crime because of poor health it doesn't make sense to keep them in full incarceration with high medical costs."