FILE: Multnomah County Justice Center, in Portland, Ore., July, 2023.
Caden Perry / OPB
In 2022, the Multnomah County auditor looked into the jails run by the county sheriff’s office. The audit found that adults in custody who were Black or had mental health conditions were disciplined and put in isolation or solitary confinement more often. That audit made several recommendations, but a new report says the sheriff’s office has not implemented the recommendations related to the use of solitary confinement.
While the sheriff’s office did not include a response to this report, a public information officer told OPB that their operations were grounded in best practices and that the auditor’s office refused their request to meet before the report was released. The sheriff’s office also said that “a decision to not adopt a specific recommendation does not diminish our commitment to providing exemplary public safety services.”
We talk with auditor Jennifer McGuirk about the details of the report and its recommendations.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Dave Miller: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Dave Miller. In 2022, the Multnomah County auditor looked into the jails run by the sheriff’s office. The audit found, among other things, that adults in custody who were Black or had mental health conditions were disciplined and put in isolation or solitary confinement at disproportionate rates. The audit included several recommendations. Now, a new follow-up report found that the sheriff’s office has not implemented the recommendations related to the use of solitary confinement.
Jennifer McGuirk is the elected Multnomah County auditor. She joins us now. It’s great to have you on the show.
Jennifer McGuirk: It’s great to be here. Thank you.
Miller: Let’s start with this initial audit because what you just released this week is a follow up to it. What led you to do that audit in 2022?
McGuirk: So, you might recall that between 2015 and 2017, there were reports that came out from Disability Rights Oregon, among others, highlighting some of the really challenging conditions for people within the county jails. And county leadership said we’re really committed to improving this. When I ran for my first term, I said I will audit jail conditions. So that’s what we did, based on commitments that the county really wanted to improve what conditions were like. And that’s the report that came out in 2022.
Miller: What do you feel were the most important findings from that audit?
McGuirk: I was surprised from that audit by the amount of times that solitary confinement or isolation was used, that it seemed to be the majority of disciplinary infractions led to isolation. And of course, I was disappointed by the disproportionality that you mentioned with regard to particularly how Black adults and people with mental health conditions experience jail.
Miller: How did the then-sheriff Mike Reese, who’s now the head of the Oregon Department of Corrections – so, still in charge of corrections, but now for the whole state as opposed to the state’s largest county – respond to your recommendations?
McGuirk: There were some that his office agreed with. He did write though that they don’t practice solitary confinement. And the way that we had defined it worked for the audit, but wasn’t what a person would think of when they thought of solitary confinement.
Miller: This is an important piece to get into before we even hear more about your follow-up. It’s kind of a debate I guess about terms. So what was the sheriff’s office’s argument about what constitutes solitary confinement, or seclusion, or whatever these words might be, and what is your definition?
McGuirk: I don’t personally have a definition. The definitions my office look to come from the National Correctional Health authority – I can’t remember their exact acronym off the top of my head.
Miller: Some kind of body that pays attention to the health of people who are behind bars.
McGuirk: Yes. And specifically correctional health care. As well as the United Nations minimum standards. Both of those authorities describe minimal access to any kind of outside stimulation. The UN rules, which are also called the Mandela rules, state that it’s anything 22 hours or more where you are in isolation a day. And those are the standards that we looked at, because they’re endorsed internationally and nationally as well.
Miller: So when you look at those national and international definitions, what was happening in 2022 and what’s happening now in Multnomah County, does it fit that definition?
McGuirk: Yes.
Miller: In what way? What are examples of [how] people in county lockup here [are] being treated?
McGuirk: The sheriff’s disciplinary manual states that disciplinary housing, where adults in custody are confined to their cells for 23 to 23.75 hours a day, depending on disciplinary level … So that’s more than 22 hours. We did find that starting this month, with some new policies, it will get reduced down to 22 hours. But that’s still considered solitary confinement.
Also, at the county jails, disciplinary segregation can be up to 30 days for a single violation, or up to 60 days for multiple violations per incident. Both the National Commission on Correctional Health Care, which is the agency I was trying to say earlier, and the UN standard minimum rules, say that solitary confinement should never exceed 15 days because it can lead to harms.
Miller: What have studies found about the problems or the harms that can follow from solitary confinement?
McGuirk: One of the things we cited in our report, and we looked at other studies as well, focused on a meta study that was done by Montreal Mental Health University Institute and the University of Montreal. They looked at 13 studies regarding mental health and mortality impact of solitary confinement. This looked at 382,440 adults in custody, with 23% having been in solitary. They found strong correlations between solitary confinement and worsened general mental health, anxiety, depression, self-harm and mortality, including suicide. It’s a lot of really bad things that can happen if somebody’s isolated.
Miller: What patterns did you find in this follow-up report in terms of who is being put in solitary confinement, and for what reasons? Let’s start with the demographics, the who.
McGuirk: So we found that a variety of adults in custody may end up in solitary. But we did find that those who are Black, or Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander spend a higher percent of their time in solitary confinement. And this was statistically significant, meaning it’s very unlikely that it’s due to chance.
And then we also found that those who had a documented mental health condition spent a higher percent of their time in solitary as well. And again, that was statistically significant.
Miller: And what are some of the reasons that these people might end up in solitary?
McGuirk: So, there’s a range of penalties the sheriff’s office can use if someone, say, doesn’t listen to directions, abuses certain privileges. They could be removed from a job in the jail. They could lose privileges. They could be fined. But solitary confinement was kind of the default. We saw it 91% of the time in relationship to citations. So there’s definitely a variety of other levers that could be pulled, and I don’t know why that was the default.
Miller: What were the specific recommendations about solitary confinement that your office said the sheriff’s office should pursue four years ago? And what have they actually done?
McGuirk: We said four years ago that they needed to stop putting people with known mental health conditions into solitary, basically, for the reasons I just read earlier. If somebody already has a mental health condition, it just means they’re that much more likely to have a really negative outcome. So we wanted to see that happen in 2022. We gave them more time to end the practice for everybody else in the jails. They have not ended that practice. As I mentioned, they are going to allow people potentially, depending on their level of discipline, to be out of their cells up to two hours a day. But that still counts as solitary.
Miller: If a corrections officer at the county says this person who’s here for under a year, say, or still just awaiting trial, if they’ve proven to be a danger to other people, we can’t have them with everybody else, what would you say?
McGuirk: I would say I totally sympathize with that. Jails are a really difficult environment for the staff who are in there, and for all of the adults in custody. But I think they need to come up with other options. And I think they have other options available that would not increase the chance that this person’s going to develop additional problems that make them that much harder to rehabilitate. And I would encourage the sheriff to explore what those are. I think using this report could have been an opportunity for the sheriff to say this is a bad practice, lots of studies have shown it, and talk about it in terms of how they need other supports or resources to change things so they can improve the situation for their employees, as well as for adults in custody.
Miller: I should note that your follow-up report does note that some of the recommendations have been implemented. Another one is in process of being implemented: to monitor deputies’ use of misconduct citations.
We did reach out to the sheriff’s office for comment, and they emailed us yesterday afternoon. This is part of what they wrote: “It is disappointing that despite our proactive good faith efforts to collaborate and ask questions regarding the auditor’s analysis prior to the report’s release, the auditor’s office declined to meet with us.” What’s your response?
McGuirk: I was really surprised to see that statement. I provided the sheriff’s office with the report on June 29, and gave them through July 10 to let me know if they had any questions, if they wanted to meet about it. I told them I would need all written feedback by July 10, and then I would finalize and issue the report this week.
I didn’t hear anything except for an acknowledgement on June 29 saying, “we’ll get back to you by July 10.” Then on July 10, I received a number of questions from the sheriff, and they wanted to meet this week. But we weren’t able to do that because my main staff person on this project is on vacation. So we answered all of their questions that same day.
Miller: Questions about the methodology?
McGuirk: Yes. So we, for example, explained what our independent and dependent variables were for different analyses. And they asked where we had gotten the mental health condition information, and we told them who we got it from at the sheriff’s office and where it was in their data. So I feel like we thoroughly answered their questions.
Miller: The sheriff’s office, though, also said this – specifically about your not meeting with them, which you’ve just explained your understanding of how that worked – that “unfortunately, it resulted in statements that mischaracterized the rigorous and professional work of our dedicated corrections deputies.” We then followed up. It seemed like they had specific substantive questions about the results of the audit. We said, “What are they?” They said, “We have no further information to provide regarding the auditor’s evaluation.”
Do you have any idea what their substantive disagreements are, separate from sort of procedural questions about meeting with you?
McGuirk: No. I have no idea. Our work is to extremely high standards. Every statement, every analysis in the report goes through a really comprehensive fact checking process. One of the best, if not the best data analyst in my office conducted this work. So I don’t know what they’re trying to do, other than perhaps discredit my office’s work. I 100% stand behind this work.
And if I were the sheriff, I would have used this to say there’s some problems here going on with use of solitary confinement. We’re having – and I don’t know if this is the case – to rely on it because of the structure of the Multnomah County Detention Center. We really need a new facility. We want to treat people humanely. So in other words, she could have switched this to an opportunity to improve the justice system, and better support her staff and the adults in custody. Instead, she decided she wanted to focus on the fact that I could not meet with her and make statements without providing any evidence.
Miller: Just so we understand here, you’re independently elected by voters, as is the sheriff and as are the members of the county commission. Do you have any direct power over the sheriff? Can you compel them to do anything? Or is this just you do your report, you put it out to the public, you have these recommendations, and if they carry them out, they carry them out. Am I right about that?
McGuirk: Yes, I do not have enforcement power. Auditors generally don’t because then that puts us in the position of management, which we’re not supposed to be. So really, my power here is in sharing information with the commissioners and with the public, and really calling on people – if you would like to see things operate differently – to let their elected officials know that, and to point out where things have improved so that people get a full picture of the, in this case, positive changes that were made in the sheriff’s office, and then areas where they’re still lacking.
Miller: This is actually the second follow up since the 2022 audit. Just briefly, do you have plans to do another one?
McGuirk: I am termed out at the end of this calendar year. So that would be up to whoever comes next.
Miller: Jennifer McGuirk, thanks very much.
McGuirk: Thank you.
Miller: Jennifer McGuirk is the Multnomah County auditor. She joined us to talk about the 2022 audit on county jails follow up that her office just released.
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