Opinion: Oregonians deserve an honest accounting of corrections chief’s tenure

Bobbin Singh

Singh is executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center.

As Oregon Department of Corrections chief Colette Peters makes the jump to the federal Bureau of Prisons as its new director, it’s worth considering the legacy she leaves behind. It’s not what she and others would have people believe. Whether it be health and safety issues for incarcerated people, physical and sexual abuse in prisons, corruption in the system or turnover in leadership, problems in Oregon almost mirror those seen nationally. These concerns have been identified by Oregon Department of Corrections employees, contractors, volunteers, people in custody, family members , advocates, journalists and those suing the system.

For the past several years, Peters has regularly spoken about her trips to Norway prisons and Oregon’s subsequent adoption of a similar approach that prioritizes “humanizing and normalizing” those in prison. This not only ensures that individuals returning from prison back into our communities are prepared for success, but also creates a healthier and safer working environment for corrections officers. Peters and the corrections department branded this approach and value system as the “Oregon Way” and have used it to garner much attention. However, as advocates for adults in custody , we have not seen evidence that Ms. Peters has effectively addressed the concerns of incarcerated Oregonians nor that her much-touted “Oregon Way” has truly filtered down to change the way the 12,000-plus Oregonians in prison are treated.

My organization, the Oregon Justice Resource Center, recently issued a report reviewing more than 400 media reports on the corrections department from March 1, 2020, to March 31, 2022. Many articles highlighted glaring and reoccurring issues within the department’s staff, culture and daily operations, with allegations of constitutional rights violations; denial of basic needs; sexual, physical, and mental harm; negligent medical care; and general disregard for human life and wellbeing. These stories are only a fraction of what is happening but the picture they paint intervention is disturbing and demands. Additionally, we are co-leading a certified class-action suit against the state for its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in which 46 incarcerated people have died and more than 5,500 have been infected. Meanwhile, Peters is a defendant in another lawsuit of ours on behalf of a client who served 120 days in solitary confinement in what we contend was egregious retaliation for his work as a legal assistant.

Despite the cascade of evidence revealing serious issues within the department, the corrections department and Peters continue to put forward a misleading narrative that either ignores the issues or profoundly sanitizes the facts. An example of this includes Peters’ recent presentation to legislators about the corrections department’s treatment of adults in custody during the 2020 wildfires. The agency failed in multiple ways to properly evacuate those in custody, their attorneys told news organizations. Corrections staff left some adults in custody on buses for hours without access to bathrooms, delayed giving medication, housed individuals in a manner that failed to protect them against violence, limited access to water, and didn’t provide meals for nearly 24 hours, among other failures. Peters defined these as “bumps” in the agency’s handling of the evacuations that were otherwise an “absolute success” because officials met the low bar of not losing any of the adults in their custod y or cause them to be harmed – despite the fact that there are reports of adults in custody actually claiming to be traumatized and harmed by the corrections department’s actions.

Additionally, in discussing the agency’s distribution of COVID-19 vaccines to adults in custody, Peters has in legislative hearings and in a radio interview omitted or glossed over the extraordinary ruling by a federal judge that forced the agency to provide vaccines earlier than originally planned. Prior to the judge’s order, the infection rate in prisons was 28% compared to 3.3% for the general population. These are just two examples, but the record is rife with many more for those who care to look. Unfortunately, legislators and other public officials rarely question Peters’ accounts or seek out differing perspectives, revealing their lack of interest in understanding how individuals in our prisons our treated.

Peters will now take a big step up in responsibility from overseeing 12,000 people in custody to 150,000 people in federal prisons across the country. Based on her tenure in Oregon, we do not believe she is prepared to honestly confront problems within the federal carceral system.

Denial of the truth and willful ignorance of history perpetuates these insulting false narratives and the erasure of the harms endured by those individuals in our prisons who continue to fight for their rights and dignity. Oregonians deserve an honest accounting of Peters’ tenure at the corrections department , so that we can begin to reconcile ourselves to that truth and engage in meaningful changes that actually improve community well-being.