Harney County defends its jail while lobbying to replace it

Sheriff Dan Jenkins was leading a tour through the Harney County Jail in January when he asked David Peck to take over as tour guide for a moment.

From behind the bars of his cell, Peck said life at the jail wasn’t too bad. He listed perks like access to board games, phone calls and television. He’d been at the jail before and said their living quarters had changed for the better.

“You got more beds, and it’s not too crowded,” he said.

Despite Peck’s review, the 63-year-old jail is starting to show its age. Paint is chipping off the walls, the equipment looks old and outdated and conditions are cramped enough that the booking area is in full view of some jail cells.

Emily Perkins’ problems with the jail go far beyond its aesthetics.

“There was no hot water in your cell,” she said. “The toilets would get plugged up. It was very disgusting.”

Perkins served several days at the jail after she was arrested for DUI in 2018. She said she was so repulsed by the conditions that she refused to bathe and ate as little as possible.

Perkins is far from the only critic of the jail, but Jenkins defended the work of the sheriff’s office, arguing that his staff has taken the necessary steps to keep the jail functional while it searched for funding for a new facility.

Finding a long-term solution isn’t so simple, though. Like many parts of Oregon without large cities, tax money is hard to come by in Harney County, with a tax base spread across 10,000 square miles that are largely owned by the federal government. That leaves less than $1 million per year to operate the sheriff’s office and little appetite from the public to grow that budget.

Harney County is far from the only place struggling to fund jails. Josephine County released people from its jail in 2012 after a ballot measure failed. Coos County did the same this year under similar circumstances.

Inmates gossiped about when the Harney jail would be shut down during her stay, Perkins said. Seven years after her release, she still thinks it should be.

“There should be an expiration date,” she said. “Especially when you’re locked up and in a facility. You’re in there, they’re responsible for you.”

‘Our citizens deserve better’

A grand jury inspection of the Harney County Jail, released in late 2024, is short but withering.

State law requires grand juries to inspect every county jail in the state. The grand jury foreman who inspected Harney County’s facility was unsparing, calling the jail “old,” “oppressive,” and suggesting it was a fire hazard.

Jail scrutiny hasn’t just come from laymen.

Former Sheriff Dave Ward once called the jail a “civil liability.” Ward became a national figure in 2016 after far-right militia members took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near Burns. Just three years later, he resigned publicly as county budget cuts threatened to cut jail funding he already felt was inadequate.

“It is my opinion that our citizens deserve better service for their tax dollars than a cut in law-enforcement services and an underfunded jail that will most likely be shut down in the near future for failure to meet the minimum lawful requirements,” Ward wrote in an op-ed published in the Burns Times-Herald.

The wildlife refuge occupation laid bare some of the drawbacks of an outdated jail.

One of the main access points is a door that opens to an alley between the jail and the Harney County Courthouse, said Roxane Worley, a former jail commander for the sheriff’s office. The area was unsecured and accessible to the public in 2016, meaning family and friends could come into contact with deputies as they took suspects into the jail.

“During the occupation, we had a lot of people walking through here with firearms and that sort of thing,” she said before gesturing to the fences the sheriff’s office eventually installed. “So this was really necessary for us to get.”

The jail was built in 1962 and the original plans included living quarters for on-site caretakers, Worley said. Standards for jails have changed drastically since then, spurring staff to retrofit renovations for the seven to 10 inmates who are usually in the sheriff’s custody.

The original jail plans didn’t include a place for inmates to exercise, so the office built a walled, 12-foot-by-12-foot square in the alleyway for workout time. The county installed a fire suppression sprinkler system in the jail because the original system was a hose stored behind a door. When inmates needed to make virtual appearances in court, a prefabricated wall was put up to turn a storage area into a video room.

The sheriff’s office admits these are Band-aids rather than long-term solutions for an aging facility, but Worley was still taken by surprise when she heard about the scathing grand jury report.

“I haven’t read the grand jury inspection this time,” she said. “But, in the past, they’ve been relatively good. I think the grand jury is made up of the public, and so I guess the report depends on their idea [of the jail].”

Defending the jail

When it comes to grand jury reports, Jenkins said everyone’s a critic.

“It depends on the people’s personal bias,” he said. “We’ve had them say, in the past, ‘The facility’s too good. They just need bread and water.’ And it’s like, ‘No, not in the 2020s.’ And then we’ve had other people say, ‘Oh, they need massages and fancy mattresses and everything else.‘”

Jenkins, a military veteran who had worked for the sheriff’s office on and off since 2004, was appointed to replace Ward in 2019. He took a different tack than Ward about the jail, adding that he didn’t think it was a good idea for his predecessor to air his opinions on the jail and county operations publicly.

For his part, Ward has been mum on the jail and Harney County since his resignation. He declined to offer a comment, writing in a text message he had “no interest in involving myself in Harney County matters.”

While the 2024 grand jury report may have synced with Ward’s thoughts on the jail, Jenkins pointed to previous grand jury inspections that were far more positive. Recent professional inspections by the Oregon State Sheriff’s Association and the Oregon Department of Corrections both concluded that the jail was safe and functional.

Jeremiah Stromberg oversees the community corrections division for the state Department of Corrections, a division required by state law to inspect every detention facility in the state.

The department’s main goal with these inspections is making sure detention facilities can meet basic standards like providing meals, maintaining functional bathrooms and showers, and passing fire safety inspections, Stromberg said. These inspections don’t include talking with inmates or the aesthetic qualities of the facility.

“It can be old. It may have peeling paint and still be the old bars, but as long as the basic infrastructure still provides for those daily routines … then it meets the statutory requirements of a detention facility,” he said.

Stromberg said when a facility fails an inspection, usually for fire safety issues, the department works with the local law enforcement on a corrective plan. Continued failure to comply with that plan can result in sanctions from the Oregon Department of Justice.

Waiting for money

While the current Harney County Jail is adequate in the eyes of the state, Jenkins still wants a new facility.

The county originally looked at turning a vacant junior high school building near the sheriff’s office into a justice center, Jenkins said. The facility would have not only included the jail, but also the circuit court, the sheriff’s office, probation and parole, and the city police departments for Hines and Burns.

While that option is still on the table, Jenkins is now focusing more of his attention on another nearby plot: an empty lot across from the current jail. The idea for the lot is less ambitious — a new jail by itself — but it’s considered more realistic in a community where tax money is hard to come by.

At about 7,400 people, Harney County is one of the most sparsely populated counties in Oregon. Jenkins said the sheriff’s office is mostly reliant on the county’s small general fund and isn’t trying to pursue bonds or tax levies the county’s conservative electorate is unlikely to support.

“People don’t want to see their taxes go up, including me,” he said with a laugh.

Harney County is turning to the Legislature to try to get its jail funding, and they’re hoping that their lobbying will get them to the finish line during the current session.

Worley, who recently left the sheriff’s office to become the city administrator of Hines, said she wished the jail could provide the kind of rehabilitation services found at other jail facilities, such as adult education programs and mental health services. But as it stands right now, the jail has no room.

If the sheriff’s office wants a new jail, locals will have to convince lawmakers more than 250 miles away in Salem to get it done.

“Even though we’re a small community, we still are experiencing the same problems with mental health and homelessness,” Worley said. “Unfortunately, rural communities are not the primary focus, but we need help.”