Marion County District Attorney Paige Clarkson says her office has convened a grand jury to investigate Oregon State Hospital and will likely issue a report by the end of the year.
Clarkson says she has grown increasingly concerned in recent years that the state’s flagship psychiatric hospital, which has its main facility in Salem, “cannot meet the challenge of the moment.”
Clarkson was among the prosecutors who sought to manage the effects of a long-standing, controversial court order that, in practice, pressures the hospital to process many patients at a heightened speed, such that it can clear space for the many new ones who would otherwise be warehoused in jails…