WOMEN WILL OCCUPY PART OF THE EASTERN OREGON PRISON

PENDLETON, Ore. (AP) -- By next summer, 160 women will join more than
1,500 male inmates at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in
what prison officials say is a temporary overcrowding fix that could
last four years.

The move is designed to alleviate overcrowding at the Oregon Women's
Correction Center in Salem and keep the state from having to send as
many inmates to prisons elsewhere.

Starting in December, the first group of women inmates will be
transported from a private prison in Gallup, New Mexico, where the
state rents 119 beds. The rest will come from the state prison in Salem.

To make room at Eastern Oregon, about 200 men are being shipped to the
state's Snake River prison in Ontario. Ninety-five have already moved
and the rest will be gone by mid-October.

"It's not every time you get the luxury of a phase-in," said Jean
Hill, prison superintendent. "It'll give us time to adjust."

The women's unit will be carved out of what is known as H Building, a
two-story building tucked into the southeast corner of the
institution.

The building also is home to the men's disciplinary segregation unit,
where inmates are housed in single cells rather than the larger
dormitory-style units.

"The idea of putting the women in Unit H was pretty creative on our
part," said Corrections Department spokeswoman Perrin Damon. "You
don't usually think of mixing men and women in the same facility, but
it's so segregated, there shouldn't be any problems."

The two blocks will share a wall: On one side is the segregation
unit's exercise yard, on the other will be the women's exercise yard.

That wall poses some concern to officials. But measures will be taken
to prohibit the passing of notes or contraband over the wall, Hill
said.

One solution could be restricting the men to individual exercise
cubicles or wire cage-like structures for their allotted time outdoors.

Windows along the sidewalk leading to the yard will be frosted, as
will any windows through which men and women inmates might catch
glimpses of each other.

Seventeen security staff, three nurses and a pharmacy technician will
be hired and assigned strictly to the women's area.

A new structure, a work and programs building, will be built at the
open end of the women's exercise yard, Hill said.

"We just didn't have enough space to keep the women working, so that's
going to assist us a great deal," she said.

Some work will be created simply in meeting the needs of the block,
such as cleaning and setting up rooms. Women inmates also will prepare
and serve the food cooked by male inmates in the institution's kitchen.

"Everything that needs to be done, it'll be the women's unit so they
will be doing it," Hill said.

The mixed-population arrangement isn't unique in the state. The
Columbia River Correctional Institution near the Portland airport
currently houses 317 men and 162 women.

Both arrangements will come to an end once the state opens its new
women's prison and intake center, expected to house more than 1,300 at
the site of the old Dammasch State Hospital in Wilsonville.

"If we break ground in May, like we'd like to do, we could start
housing people in February 2001," Damon said.

Checked-by: Patrick Henry