On paper, Oregon’s Office of Corrections Ombudsman looks like the most powerful position in state government you’ve never heard of.
State law gives the ombuds broad authority to investigate the prison system for corruption or prisoner abuse, including subpoenaing records and compelling staff to give sworn testimony. The ombuds can make prison officials explain their decisions. If the ombuds thinks state law is hurting prisoners, they’re required to bring those concerns to lawmakers.
In short, the corrections ombuds office is designed to be an early warning system for dysfunction and malfeasance.
But most of the ombuds’ strongest tools are going unused even as Oregon has seen alarming news about prison conditions and as other states have strengthened oversight of their corrections systems. Oregon’s corrections ombuds office is among the least developed of any independent state prison monitoring agency. Street Roots found:
- The current ombuds has not made any recommendations for changes to the prison system or to the Legislature.
- Unlike most state corrections monitors, Oregon’s office doesn’t post any data or reports on its website regarding prison conditions. Records show the governor’s staff prevented the release of a report produced by the previous ombuds.
- Oregon has the smallest staff of any state with an independent corrections monitor, according to research from the National Resource Center for Correctional Oversight.
“What Oregon has (for a corrections ombuds) is basically in name only,” said Michele Deitch, distinguished senior lecturer and director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, which operates the center.
Advocates who successfully pushed to restore the ombuds say their hopes are unfulfilled after the office was restored in 2021. Three years later, Gov. Kotek fired ombuds Adrian Wulff after he clashed with her staff, raising questions about the office’s independence. Kotek named Kristina Rice as his replacement in March 2025.
Rice, who previously served as Kotek’s director of constituency services, is the sole employee for an office covering Oregon’s 12 prisons scattered across the state that house roughly 12,000 incarcerated people, according to the center. That means one person is keeping an eye on one of the state’s most opaque institutions.
Kotek’s office did not respond to Street Roots’ questions for this story.
The Oregon Department of Corrections is currently overhauling its health system after an independent accreditation group found a backlog of 600 medical appointments for women at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility and a consulting firm described prisoners’ care as “fragmented, disorganized, and inefficient.”
Street Roots previously reported on the role of bureaucratic committees determining when prisoners receive medical procedures or devices. Doctors and attorneys blamed those committees for delaying needed care for prisoners. The reporting also highlighted the role of then-chief medical officer Dr. Warren Roberts, who was placed on leave shortly after the story was published and later fired. Street Roots also reported Oregon prisoner deaths increasing despite a declining overall population beginning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Earlier this year, an Oregon Secretary of State audit found a nearly $861 million maintenance backlog in prisons that is creating “uncomfortable and sometimes life-threatening conditions.”
Meanwhile, the state had paid nearly $8 million since 2020 to settle lawsuits and other legal claims over alleged prisoner civil rights violations and other mistreatment, according to a Street Roots analysis of state data. The state has paid out roughly $3.6 million to settle claims of whistleblowing, retaliation or wrongful discipline from prison staff during the same time period.
“There’s an expense to DOC not having any oversight or any checks,” said Bobbin Singh, executive director of the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a nonprofit that advocates for incarcerated people.
The group announced in June it had reached a $49 million settlement with the prison system over its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic that is pending final approval.
If state officials saw the ombuds office from a cost-benefit standpoint, they could see that addressing prison issues upstream could prevent downstream litigation, he said.
Rice declined an interview request and did not answer written questions.
Ombuds office revived
Oregon lawmakers took renewed interest in the ombuds office after a historic stress test of the state prison system.
The prison system was facing litigation and criticism over the spread of COVID-19 during the pandemic. There was also its chaotic and, at times violent, transfer of prisoners during historic wildfires that meant missed medications, meals and bathroom access.
Tricia Hedin, a Eugene-based retired legal assistant and prisoner rights advocate, recalled how there was already simmering frustration over unresolved problems that predated the pandemic, including accusations of staff wrongdoing and inadequate medical care that resulted in prisoner deaths.
She began researching other states’ corrections ombuds and approached state Sen. Floyd Prozanski, D-Eugene, the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, about setting up a similar office in Oregon. It turned out Oregon previously had a corrections ombuds that was cut in the early 1990s.
Oregon’s corrections ombuds can enter and inspect prisons without notice. It’s not clear if Rice is making unannounced visits. But Hedin said Rice has been able to access prisons to talk to prisoners and staff. She said Rice is trying her best and has met with the Eugene affiliate of Oregon CURE, a support group for people with incarcerated loved ones. She said a couple came to a meeting and thanked Rice for helping get their son out of segregation.
Karen Cain, the president of Oregon CURE, described Rice as kind and professional with a “heart for the job.” She said Rice successfully advocated for prisoners after hearing about their problems from their loved ones.
“For every problem that Rice helps solve, there are likely hundreds if not thousands more like it spread across the incarcerated population,” Cain said.
Both Cain and Hedin said the ombuds needs more staff.
Singh said the ombuds office operates more like a constituent or customer service position instead of an investigative agency. To be successful, the ombuds should be someone with a background in civil rights and litigation, he said.
“This position is meant to be basically an impotent position,” Singh said. “It’s not really meant to provide any type of oversight or check on DOC.”
Comparative ombuds
External oversight of prisons is standard practice in every other Western country outside the United States, said Deitch, head of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab.
Around 2018, U.S. states also began looking to bring “an outside set of eyes” to prison conditions in response to previous advocacy efforts, she said.
The National Resource Center for Correctional Oversight tracks those efforts and counts 18 states (and the District of Columbia) which it considers to have external oversight of its prisons.
Each state’s system differs in structure, authority, resources and what it discloses. Deitch said there are multiple ways to provide independent oversight, but it should include routine visits to prisons to observe conditions.
“That takes time, and that takes people,” she said. “One person cannot do all that. You need them going into different parts of the facility and talking to people. They could be multi-day visits with a team.”
Other state ombuds offices vary in size and resources.
Nebraska’s inspector general of corrections has two full-time staff and a part-time assistant for a prison population that is less than half the size of Oregon’s.
Iowa’s ombuds office investigates complaints against state agencies generally and has one staff member dedicated to prisons, with 16 other staff working on corrections issues as needed. Indiana’s ombuds office has a staff of two for a prison population roughly twice the size of Oregon’s.
Meanwhile, Connecticut’s corrections ombuds is expected to expand its staff to 10 after lawmakers approved additional funding for the office that oversees a prison population also of a similar size to Oregon. Washington state’s Office of the Corrections Ombuds has 15 staff and a $2.5 million annual budget for a prison population slightly larger than Oregon’s.
Deitch described New Jersey’s ombuds office as particularly robust with 26 staff for a prison population about the size of Washington’s.
Independent prison oversight can make a difference even when it’s not headline news, Deitch said. That might mean prisoners in a cell block getting blankets after oversight staff points out the problem, she said.
But she stressed that oversight isn’t a game of “gotcha.”
“Things in the prison environment become very normalized, and everyone’s just like, ‘Oh, that’s just the way it is,’” she said. “Sometimes it takes someone on the outside to come in and ask questions or to point something out.”
No data, no reports
Virtually every independent state corrections monitor produces publicly available reports or data on prisons.
Washington’s ombuds posts monthly reports of its investigations online. The Correctional Association of New York, a private organization granted oversight powers by the state, posts data online regarding prison staffing, mental health case loads, deaths in custody and other issues. The association’s monitoring later revealed deeper problems at state prisons where staff fatally assaulted two prisoners.
Hedin, the activist, said this reporting is a critical function of any oversight office and can help lawmakers identify systemic problems.
However, the website for Oregon’s corrections ombuds consists of a complaint form with no reports or data, despite the office’s investigative authority.
Following an investigation, Oregon’s ombuds must submit any relevant recommendations they have to corrections officials. The ombuds can then require officials to follow up on whether those recommendations were implemented. If the ombuds believes a state law is causing harm, they are required to bring that concern to the Legislature.
Yet Rice, the current ombuds, hasn’t used this authority. A public records request for any of Rice’s recommendations and responses from prison officials produced no documents.
Oregon has other ombuds offices that oversee foster care, small business assistance and other programs. Most post reports on their websites that sometimes point to significant failings by state agencies.
Wulff, the previous corrections ombuds, completed an investigative report in 2024 on barriers keeping prisoners from phones. Emails obtained through public records show that Wulff submitted the report to Kotek and asked the governor’s communication staff to help with a press release.
However, Richard Lane, the governor’s general counsel, blocked the request, citing prison officials’ disagreement with the report, records show. Even after news outlets published stories on the report months later, it still doesn’t appear to be posted on the state’s website.
Records show that Wulff also asked for an assistant and for a corrections ombuds website that would improve communication with the public. But Lane denied that request, writing that the office should define its functions first.
Before his firing, Wulff produced an annual report on his office for 2023, outlining his goals for the office, which included investigating medical care in the prison system.
The report can be found archived on the State Library’s website.
History of the prison ombuds
Oregon has had iterations of its corrections ombuds since at least the 1970s. But support from lawmakers and governors has been inconsistent, according to old press accounts.
Lawmakers briefly restored the position in 1990 in response to allegations of corruption that swirled around the prison system in the wake of the suspicious death of state Corrections Director Michael Francke, according to The Oregonian.
The ombuds office continued to look into alleged wrongdoing by corrections officials uncovered by an earlier investigation, and it drew some praise for calling out shoddy record keeping in the prison industries program.
Then-acting corrections ombuds John K. Hoover asked for funding for staff, arguing that the office was needed because corrections staff, prisoners and their families didn’t trust the corrections department.
But a legislative committee recommended delaying further funding for the ombuds. It was cut from the governor’s office the next year, according to the East Oregonian.
In response, Monte Gillespie, a prisoner at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution, launched a hunger strike, according to the paper. In a letter, he wrote that the ombuds was needed “so that both the inmate and those that we know outside these walls can have a place to voice our complaints and concerns without fear of the state sweeping it under the rug.”
This article appears in November 4, 2026.