Benton County, Oregon

Making Benton County a Better Place to Live

Benton County Jail – History

Front Entrance to Benton County JailHistory of the Jail

The present Benton County Jail was built in 1976 with an original designed capacity of 27 offenders.

  • Total size: approximately 8,000 square feet
  • Total cost to build: just under $800,000

It replaced the old stucco and tile jail which had served Benton County citizens since 1929. Both the Benton County Jail and the adjoining Law Enforcement Center were designed by architect Graham Braun of Vancouver, BC with the help of many citizen committees.

The citizen planning committees purposefully kept the size of the jail small for several reasons. First, they felt that many lower-risk offenses, particularly misdemeanors, should be diverted from jail and instead maintained on supervised probation programs.

They also envisioned that a regional jail network would be built by the Oregon Department of Corrections to house felony offenders sentenced to serve time at the local level.

In the early 1970s, a small number of county jail offenders were occasionally housed in the now-defunct State Work Release Center in Corvallis and at the Forest Work Camp in Tillamook. Oregon voters turned down funding measures that would have provided for the regional jail system.

Vintage photo of Benton County Sheriff and DeputiesInmate lawsuits filed against the Oregon Department of Corrections for prison crowding coupled with the economic recession of the early 1980s brought an end to the state work release centers.

Originally the county jail was only meant to last 10 years, but the jail has been serving Benton County for 35 years now.

 

 

 

 

 

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