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Life On the Inside
The current incarnation of the Clackamas County Jail is in Oregon City. As it turns out, the very first public building constructed in Oregon City way back in 1845 was a jail. That building is long gone but the new facility can hold up to 434 inmates. Each year there are approximately 16,000 offenders who are booked and processed through the jail. Clearly, there is a lot of turn around.

A former inmate at Clackamas County Jail found the boredom to be the worst thing about the jail. There is no television and the best source of killing time is reading books or playing cards or dominoes. Each cell block was allowed one hour a week to go outside into the yard. The accommodations are a combination of open dorm layouts for short timers and smaller two man cells for inmates who will be "guests" longer.

On the official website for the jail, they boast that 36,000 meals are served to inmates each month at a cost of 91 cents per meal. As you might expect, that doesn't leave a lot of room for variety or flavor.

Good Behavior Policy
As with many other jails across the country, overcrowding is a big issue to deal with at Clackamas. The state passed a law that if the jail exceeds 90% of capacity they will have to institute a forced-release schedule. This has less to do with earned good time as it does to merely speeding up release to free up beds. There is also an Electronic Home Detention program that provides for convicted offenders to serve out their sentence in their homes with an ankle bracelet.

The official good time policy is 20% reduction of a prisoner's sentence. This breaks down to 10% for good behavior and 10% for program compliance or showing up for work.

Visitor and Telephone Policy
Inmates are allowed to make collect calls during the day provided the phones are open. For visitations, you need to be put on the official jail visiting list form. This is given to every inmate upon their arrival. They are allowed to have six visitors on this list.

A criminal background check will be run on everyone on the list. Inmates are granted two days a week for visits and these days vary depending on where they are house. You'll need to rely on the inmate to tell you when their visit time is.

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