Since 1994, the average length of a prison sentence in Oregon, excluding life or death sentences, has increased from nearly two years to almost six. This three-fold spike means Oregon’s prison population has gone from around 6,700 people to 12,000 over the last three decades.
As the population goes, so goes the cost. The state prison system’s inflation-adjusted annual budget has ballooned from about $225 million in 1994 to $1.4 billion in 2026.
The primary driver of this explosion in the prison population is a 1990s-era state law known as Measure 11, based on its ballot number. The voter-approved legislation set mandatory minimum sentencing rules for 16 violent and sex-related crimes. For people whose convictions fall under this law, first-time offenders are automatically sentenced the same as repeat offenders. Judges, stripped of discretion by the law, also cannot reduce sentences for good behavior.
Opponents have unsuccessfully fought to repeal Measure 11 in the past, but their efforts deserve renewed attention. Last year, Gov. Tina Kotek asked state agencies to cut 5% of their budgets to help resolve a state budget crisis. As of May, the Oregon Department of Corrections had a deficit of nearly $55 million. The agency has responded by holding off on new hires and halting the start of new programs or expansion of existing ones.
But piecemeal budget tinkering is a temporary and insufficient solution. The real root of high costs is clear: Nearly half the prison population, or 5,630 people, are serving sentences for Measure 11 offenses, at a cost of roughly $80,000 a year per person.
It’s not just that the costs are exorbitant. The measure has also failed on its promise to reduce crime while blunting tools that we know keep prisons safer, promote rehabilitation and reduce the size of the prison population.
I had never heard of Measure 11 before I was sentenced under the law in 2015 as a first-time offender. I’m now serving a 34-year prison sentence for sexual abuse crimes; I deserve a severe sentence, and the victim of my crime deserves to feel that justice was served. If Measure 11 advanced the aims of justice for victims or rehabilitation for people like myself, I would support it. But it does not.
Measure 11 is not preventing crime
In the early 1990s, Oregon prisons had a shortage of prison beds. Because of the limited resources, judges issued shorter sentences, and some offenders received suspended sentences or probation instead of prison time, even for serious offenses.
Critics of the lax sentencing argued that more crime ensued as a result. According to Common Sense for Oregon, a conservative public policy advocacy group, Measure 11 passed because Oregonians were frustrated with high crime rates in their state and demanded more substantial prison terms for serious offenses. Oregon district attorneys have been divided over reforming mandatory sentences, according to reporting from Oregon Public Broadcasting, but the Oregon District Attorneys Association has issued statements of support for Measure 11.
“In the first two decades after the passage of Measure 11, violent crime in Oregon dropped by over half,” Washington County District Attorney Kevin Barton said in a December 2020 statement. “While I support responsible conversations to ensure our sentencing laws reflect our current needs and values, I believe that repealing Measure 11 minimum sentences for violent felonies will make Oregonians less safe and is contrary to the will of Oregon voters.”
But about a year later, the Oregon Criminal Justice Commission, a state agency that helps develop public safety policies, reported that Measure 11 may not have had the impact some have claimed. The report acknowledged that crime rates had indeed dropped but argued that Measure 11 is unlikely to have been the primary cause. Instead, it attributed the drop to “broader socioeconomic forces” that played out across the country, including aging demographics, economic growth and a decline of the 1980s and ’90s crack-cocaine epidemic.
The claim that long sentences deter crimes also fails on intuitive grounds. Most people, when they commit a crime, do not expect to be caught. They’re often impaired by substances or in mental distress. Many offenders are simply unfamiliar with the exact legal consequences they’ll face.
That was the case for me. I had not heard of Measure 11 when I committed my crime. Kyle Markee, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2014, also said Measure 11 didn’t prevent him from reoffending.
“It’s an unnecessary burden on the state to incarcerate first-time offenders the same as repeat offenders,” said Markee, who returned to prison after being convicted of murder in 2014.
Brian Daniel Bement has been incarcerated since 2010 and is serving a life sentence for murder. He also said Measure 11 didn’t factor into his decision to commit a crime.
More importantly, Bement said that lawmakers and victim advocacy groups often misrepresent Measure 11 to the public. Before he was incarcerated in 2010, he thought Measure 11 only applied to serious repeat sex offenders. He said that most people will only understand the full scope of the law after they or someone they know becomes incarcerated.
“I don’t think anyone who commits a crime is thinking about the law,” he said.
Measure 11 made prisons more violent
One of the more insidious provisions of Measure 11 removed the ability for prisoners to earn time off their sentences.
Bement said the public doesn’t sufficiently appreciate the terrible consequences of stripping this good-time incentive. He spent the first few years of his incarceration as a member of a prison gang. He witnessed firsthand how Measure 11 makes it easier for gangs to recruit new members because guys don’t have the motivation of early release to encourage better behavior.
“These kids come to prison for a Measure 11 crime,” he said. “They have no good-time and nothing to look forward to. The gangs make them all these promises. They join because they’ve got nothing else and they end up leaving prison full-fledged criminals with face tattoos.”
Ray Peters, who runs the work program at my prison and has been an employee of the Oregon DOC for nearly 30 years, said the loss of good-time credit led to a notable rise in prison violence following the measure’s implementation.
“It made it harder to deescalate a situation,” Peters said. “I’d hear guys say, ‘Clock doesn’t stop for me. I’m Measure 11.’ They didn’t get earned time and they didn’t have to see the parole board, so they didn’t care.”
Capt. Justin Wylie, who has served 32 years for the department of corrections and worked at half of Oregon’s state prisons, noticed a distinct shift in prison dynamics after Measure 11. He agreed that people coming into prison lost motivation knowing there was no hope of early release. This directly contributed to an increase in assaults and other incidents, he said.
“I fully support giving back earned time for certain crimes,” he said. “It provides us with tools to manage populations. The goal is to make better neighbors, and you can’t do that by warehousing people.”
Peters explained that the public often misinterprets policies like earned time off. Rather than recognizing these efforts as essential tools to motivate and rehabilitate people, skeptics see them as attacks on law and order. He said that offering effective rehabilitative programming is increasingly difficult when facilities are overcrowded, understaffed and underfunded.
Budget cuts risk making things worse
We are beginning to feel the effects of budget cuts at our prison in eastern Oregon.
This summer, college classes shifted from evening to daytime because the facility cannot afford a corrections officer to handle evening security. Because most prison jobs run during the day, some of us were forced to choose between suspending our educational pursuits or leaving our jobs. Meanwhile, the prison cut visiting hours, reduced funding for programming and canceled recreational events.
Proponents of Measure 11 may argue that the impact on victims outweighs the rising costs of prisons, and they have a point. I can never know what it is like to be the victim of my crime, and all victims deserve to feel that justice was served. Like most people I know in prison, I am here because I deserve to be.
But even with Measure 11 in place, the vast majority of incarcerated Oregonians still have a release date. Cutting programming and education, while also weakening family ties, will not prepare us for life on the outside, and it will not make anyone on the outside safer.