Newly disclosed records concerning Oregon’s corrections ombudsman suggest a rocky start for the relatively new position, which the Legislature funded two years ago to address complaints from prisoners, their families and others within the state’s prison system.
The need was clear.
Over the past several years, the Oregon Department of Corrections has faced a mountain of claims related to its treatment of transgender prisoners, prison medical care, sexual abuse of prisoners and retaliation.
It has struggled to contain the flood of drugs entering its prisons. And an outside examination found a toxic culture at the state’s prison for women.
In the past year alone, the state paid out nearly $3.5 million to three Department of Corrections employees who filed separate retaliation claims against top managers.
Last fall, Gov. Tina Kotek hired Mike Reese, a former Multnomah County sheriff and Portland police chief, to lead the state prison system. Reese declared hiring, mental health care and re-entry services as his top priorities.
Meanwhile, Kotek’s top aides and corrections department leaders stonewalled or ignored the corrections ombudsman’s repeated attempts to investigate complaints of abuse and “malfeasance” in state prisons, according to an internal memo.
In a Jan. 18 email to Richard Lane, general counsel for Kotek, Ombudsman Adrian Wulff aired his grievances, including unspecified allegations of retaliation by unnamed corrections department leaders.
“This has been an incredibly stressful experience for me and I feel like I am going to be fired for advocating for more help,” he wrote. “I am being retaliated against for sharing my concerns about DOC corruption because it will cause problems and this is starting to feel like a whistleblower situation.”
The Legislature first envisioned a corrections ombudsman decades ago, but it wasn’t until 2021 that former Gov. Kate Brown had the funding to fill the role.
Brown hired Wulff, a former therapist at the state’s women’s prison, and he now reports to Kotek. He receives an annual salary of about $158,000.
According to the original job posting, the ombudsman works out of the governor’s office but “will not receive any supervision or direction” from the governor’s staff, preserving the ombudsman’s independence.
The job’s duties include providing information to prisoners, their families and corrections workers about the rights of people in custody, monitoring Corrections Department compliance with state and federal rules related to prisoner health and welfare and investigating complaints.
This month, Wulff forwarded his Jan. 18 email outlining his concerns about “credible allegations of waste, fraud, and abuse” in the corrections department to four Portland-area lawmakers, including two key backers of funding the new position, Sen. Michael Dembrow and Rep. Maxine Dexter.
Dembrow said in an interview that the state needs an intermediary between prisoners and the corrections system and that prisoners’ families also need to have an ombudsman as a resource.
But he said the position’s authority needs more clarity given that it is based on a decades-old statute.
“We are really in a situation where the ombuds is expected to build the plane while he is flying it,” Dembrow said.
In his message to the governor’s general counsel, Wulff said his requests for information from the corrections department have been met with resistance or ignorance.
Though he offered few details of what he has found, Wulff called out what he characterized as high rates of women corrections workers “being stalked, assaulted, and harassed” by other employees and said women prisoners similarly report high rates of abuse by employees.
“It’s much worse than anyone imagines,” he wrote.
Elisabeth Shepard, Kotek’s spokesperson, said Wulff has been “reestablishing the ombuds function that has been vacant for over 20 years” and that Kotek’s office “has attempted to provide support in this effort.”
She said Kotek is aware of Wulff’s concerns and expects him to prioritize responding to individual complaints from prisoners.
Reese, in a written statement, said that his agency values the ombudsman’s role and has cooperated with his requests for information. He said the agency has logged 118 requests from the ombudsman and all but seven have been completed. He said those outstanding requests are still pending because they involve extensive data searches, personnel investigations or litigation.
Reese said the agency plans to develop a new policy related to the ombudsman’s information requests.
The governor’s office and lawyers for the Legislature released the Jan. 18 email — and other correspondence from Wulff — under a public records request from The Oregonian/OregonLive. Wulff declined to comment and referred questions to Kotek’s communications staff.
In that correspondence, Wulff complained to Kotek’s general counsel that Constantin Severe — the public safety adviser to both Brown and Kotek — ignored him. Records show extensive back and forth over time between Wulff and both men; in many of the emails, Wulff asks for an assistant to help process correspondence from prisoners and others.
Wulff wrote that Severe often “did not ask follow up questions, offer feedback, or tell me what he was going to do with the serious issues I was sharing with him.”
He also called out Lane’s lack of responsiveness, saying “you haven’t even replied … with a ‘let me get back to you on this.’”
In an email Lane sent to Wulff, he asks the ombudsman to “to put aside past grievances to start fresh and move forward productively. Instead, you repeatedly complain about issues that pre-date our working relationship.”
Lane appeared at one point to take a dim view of Wulff’s decision to share “internal communications” with lawmakers, saying the ombudsman works for Kotek and not the Legislature.
“My asking you to explain why you feel it is necessary to disclose executive branch communications with individuals outside the executive branch is reasonable and quite appropriate,” Lane said.
Aliza Kaplan, a prominent Lewis & Clark Law School professor who works extensively with prisoners on legal matters, said her students conducted a national survey of other states’ corrections ombudsman offices. She said Wulff needs additional staff, including a lawyer, to help review the large volume of prisoner complaints.
“It is impossible for any one person no matter what the circumstances to be successful in a role like that when they are starting from ground zero,” she said.
-- Noelle Crombie is an enterprise reporter with a focus on criminal justice. Reach her at 503-276-7184; ncrombie@oregonian.
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