September 22nd, 2016

FEATURING:

Alternatives to expanding female incarceration in Oregon with Julia Yoshimoto and Alice Lundell of the Oregon Justice Resource Center's Women in Prison Project, the only group in the state that focuses specifically on women's prison issues.  While there are significantly more men than women in prison, nationally and in Oregon, the female prison population is growing at a much faster rate; the OJRC's recently released report "Women in Prison in Oregon" found that Oregon's female prison population had tripled from 1994 to 2015.  This month, in response to overcrowding at Oregon's women's prison, the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, the Department of Corrections stood poised to make a multi-million dollar funding request to open another facility for women, at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem.  Criminal justice reform advocates criticized the potential expansion, and the OJRC proposed several short-term measures to immediately reduce the female prison population.  Since then, the Department of Corrections has said they'd temporarily delay the funding request, in hopes that alternative methods will make an impact on prison overcrowding.