Two Rivers' $121 million utilitarian complex separates inmates in 14 housing units

Sunday, March 12, 2000

By Michael Wilson of The Oregonian staff

UMATILLA -- The state's newest prison isn't open yet, but Oregon inmates who've never even been here already have tagged it The Rock.

They may find it's even worse. At least Alcatraz had a big open yard, a place to take a walk, a deep breath. Two Rivers Correctional Institution is more like 14 small jails, lined up in rows and walled off from each other.

It's the lock-down of the future in Oregon, on the front end of a building boom of prisons that will mimic its design. Two Rivers was planned from scratch to be cheaper to operate, and easier and safer to manage than the sprawling cell blocks of its predecessors. It's a $121 million brick-and-steel monument to decentralizing, containing, micromanaging and compartmentalizing.

Two Rivers sits on the bank of the Columbia River where it meets the Umatilla River, on the edge of the small city, on the edge of nowhere. It's sterile and flat, without the architectural flair of older prisons. A short tour of Two Rivers conjures nostalgia for the days of inmates walking the yard in the shadow of gun towers.

"Look at that yard," said convicted robber Bernard Yarborough with genuine indignation, jerking a thumb toward a patch of grass smaller than most lawns. "That's not a yard. This place is more like a max." He would know. He spent most of the past 50-plus months at the maximum-security penitentiary in Salem: "the Walls" among inmates. "I'm used to the Walls, where you have more freedom."

Two Rivers is medium security but considered more rigid. Its main wing will hold 1,344 inmates in 14 housing units of 96 men apiece.

With a few exceptions, such as worship and work detail, everything the 96 men do -- eat, sleep, shower, watch TV, read, hit the treadmill, get a haircut, use the small law library, call home -- they'll do together, in their own unit. Two brothers could enter Two Rivers together, be assigned to different units and never see each other.

"The majority of your problems occur when you have a large number of inmates together," said Superintendent Bob Schiedler. The idea is divide and conquer. At Two Rivers, the biggest fight would involve 96 men.

But how many fights will start simply because a few guys stuck in the same unit day after day can't get enough distance? Two enemies could enter Two Rivers together and never lose sight of each other.

"It is going to breed a lot more hostile inmate because of the confinement," said Michael Van Patten, an Oregon State Penitentiary officer and executive vice president of the Association of Oregon Corrections Employees union. "You take and put them in a small, contained area, it's like caging up an animal, a bunch of animals."

About 90 minimum-security inmates have been housed in a separate but similar complex for two years, most of them there to help build Two Rivers. The first three housing units open March 21, with a new unit opening each month until the fall of 2001, when the prison will be full.

The first new prison since Snake River opened in 1991 and expanded in 1998, Two Rivers heralds a boom brought by the mandatory-sentencing laws passed last decade. A women's prison and intake center will break ground in Wilsonville later this month and prisons in Lakeview and Madras will follow. Their design will copy Two Rivers.

"This is the prototype," corrections spokeswoman Perrin Damon said.

The first inmates will be transferred from crowded prisons, but soon Two Rivers will take new inmates directly from the intake center. It will employ 281 corrections officers, about 80 percent of whom will be drawn from the communities in a 60-mile radius on both sides of the Columbia.

Two officers work a unit all day, two on a swing shift and one at night, a skeleton crew compared with prisons with big dining halls, where moving inmates to the food in shifts, feeding them, moving them back to the cells and counting them takes hours.

The prison boasts the latest in incarceration technology.

Two fences surround the medium-security complex. The outside fence curves inward at the top, rendering climbing nearly impossible -- a design unique in Oregon, Schiedler said. The interior fence several feet away is threaded with a "shake" alarm to alert the nearby control tower to a climber.

Going under will be even harder. Both fences have a deep wall beneath them to thwart tunneling attempts, Schiedler said. "The Rock" sits on volcanic rock, blasted away or filled in to level the foundation at the 1997 groundbreaking.

Seven state-of-the-art computer and video-monitor stations in the control booth display the prison through about 250 camera lenses. On the screen Wednesday, a truck approached a gate.

"Control, open two," came a voice over a radio speaker. The officer in front of the computer tapped a colored square on the computer screen, and the gate rolled back.

All trucks entering and leaving the prison go through an electronic heartbeat scanner strong enough to detect a mouse hidden in the back.

Inside the prison, and straight out of science fiction, most doors unlock and open with a "biometric hand reader." An officer, counselor or even inmates with special work details place their hands on a screen that reads their palm prints.

Inmates will spend much of their time in the day rooms and TV rooms. The prison's Web site -- www.doc.state.or.us/prisons/trci -- pitches the day rooms as if they were on a cruise line: "Inmates will use the day room area to consume meals and participate in table games and conversation with other inmates."

In the TV rooms, two mounted sets will show different programs during viewing hours. Unlike most TV rooms in the nation's prisons, this one will be silent. Inmates can plug headphones into jacks in the day-room tabletops. The reduced noise level will help maintain order, Schiedler said.

When that gets old, similar jacks beside each cell's bunk allow inmates to hear pre-approved radio stations. Every cell door opens and shuts automatically every hour, so inmates can enter and exit.

Food is served to the housing units from a huge main kitchen, with walk-in ovens, gigantic mixers and wall-mounted pressure hoses for cleaning. Inmate orderlies deliver the food carts to the housing units three times a day, the only new faces the 96 men see on a given day.

So-called pod feeding is not new. Oklahoma, for example, tried it at several prisons. The biggest problem was keeping the food warm. Inmates at Two Rivers said the food's not cold when it comes off the push cart, but there's not enough of it. "They feed you like a baby," Yarborough said, with several buddies nodding in agreement.

The guided tours ended this weekend; doors open for business next week.

But for now, to most inmates, Umatilla remains a faraway place, Two Rivers more a swirl of gossip than an actual cell with a bed, more nickname than destination. The Rock, the place you don't want to be.