Why Didn’t Portland Need Wapato Jail as a Jail?

The real fly in the ointment was Measure 47, a ballot initiative that passed in the same 1996 election as the jail’s funding.

Bybee Lakes Hope Center. (Henry Cromett)
By Marty Smith

I’ve never understood the story of Wapato Jail in North Portland: It didn’t open because we didn’t need it. That should mean that crime in Portland suddenly took an unexpected nosedive right as the jail was being finished, but we all know that just the opposite happened. —Just Wondering

If you ever find yourself in a situation where you have 30 seconds to find the flaw in some complex argument you’ve never seen before, you could do a lot worse than simply searching the document for the phrase “we all know...” and going from there.

What that reveals in this case, Wondering, is that you’ve probably fallen prey to “negativity bias,” the widespread human tendency to prioritize bad news over good. (This may be evolutionary: Remembering a pretty sunset may be less important for survival than recalling the spot where those bears ate Thag.) “Of course crime is getting worse!” we think. “Everything always gets worse! The whole world’s been going to hell ever since they canceled Matlock!”

Sometimes, however, the worst isn’t true: According to FBI data, violent crime in Portland has been on a downward trend since peaking in 1985—and, in fact, there was a sharp drop beginning in 2003, the year Wapato was completed. Was that drop in crime the reason we didn’t need a new jail?

Nope, not even close—in fact, we did need it! The acute need for jail beds throughout the 2000s was rivaled only by the acute embarrassment of the Multnomah County officials who’d gotten Wapato’s $58 million price tag approved by voters in 1996. No, the real fly in the ointment was Measure 47, a ballot initiative that also passed in the 1996 election.

Part of the 1990s tax revolt, Measure 47 at one stroke drastically changed the revenue picture for government agencies in Oregon, reducing public-sector coffers by hundreds of millions of dollars. This made it effectively impossible for officials to drum up the money it would have taken to open and operate the jail they were about to build.

Adding insult to injury, the special tax-exempt bonds used to fund the jail came with strict rules that made it basically illegal to use the facility for anything else, or even to sell it. Those rules finally expired in 2016 when the bonds were paid off. That’s how Wapato recently became (for the moment, at least) a homeless shelter, which is better than nothing. Still, not our finest hour.

Questions? Send them to dr.know@wweek.com.

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