The new living quarters feature birch wood, rooms awash in sunlight and fanciful murals featuring swirls of color and wildlife. Each kid has a room of his own, complete with a large chalkboard for doodling.

They’re called cottages but make no mistake: MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility is a prison for teenage boys and young men, roughly half of them serving mandatory minimum sentences under Oregon’s Measure 11.

Those spacious windows in the six residential halls are made from detention-grade glass, the hollow steel door frames are reinforced with concrete and the cells are designed to keep those who live here from killing themselves.

MacLaren, by far Oregon’s largest juvenile correctional campus with 271 beds, is wrapping up a major upgrade that added the six housing units, updated eight 1960s-era dwellings and remodeled the medical and dental clinic and fitness center.

Upgrading and updating Oregon's prisons for youth

In 2015 and 2017, the Legislature earmarked $99 million for upgrades and maintenance on youth prisons and transitional programs run by the youth authority.

$52 million: New and remodeled residential units, remodeled medical and dental clinic and fitness center at MacLaren

$20.9 million: Renovations, new high school/multipurpose building and recreation fields at Rogue Valley

$17.2 million: Maintenance, such as roof replacements and updates to heating and ventilating systems at all facilities

$7.1 million: Maintenance and a multipurpose treatment room and educational space at Oak Creek Youth Correctional Facility; Camp Florence kitchen and dining space renovation; new vocational shop at Eastern Oregon; new entrance at Camp Tillamook

$1.9 million: Closed-circuit television and electronic security systems

The work is part of a massive $99 million overhaul of the Oregon Youth Authority’s nine prisons and transitional programs that began two years ago and extends through the next four years. The undertaking represents the largest investment in youth corrections since the mid-1990s, when the Oregon Legislature signed off on five new institutions -- a response to the rising juvenile crime rate.

But the landscape has shifted dramatically.

Juvenile crime in Oregon and nationally has been on the decline for two decades. In 2000, Oregon authorities referred more than 4,330 juveniles to the youth authority, which also oversees probation and transitional programs in addition to correctional institutions; last year, that number had plummeted to 1,766.

The drop means less demand for beds in the juvenile centers, prompting Oregon this year to shutter Hillcrest in Salem, its second largest youth center. A second center, North Coast in Warrenton, will close next month.

MacLaren, which sits on 172 acres in Woodburn and is named for a pastor who worked with troubled youths in the 1940s, took in about 124 more offenders as a result of the consolidation.

'SURROUNDINGS CAN REALLY IMPACT MENTAL HEALTH'

The closures reflect not just a lower juvenile crime rate but a concerted -- and controversial -- effort by the Legislature in recent years to push counties to send fewer criminals, both youth and adults, to prison. Since 2014, the state has handed out millions to local communities to fund alternatives to incarceration.

As a result, places like Multnomah County have seen a drop of 25 percent in adult and juvenile offenders it sends to prison and youth centers.

But the juvenile corrections buildings that remain suffered from years of lean maintenance budgets and outdated design.

At MacLaren, offenders lived in drab low-slung residence halls with cheerless interiors and harsh fluorescent lighting. Outdoor enclosures where kids hung out resembled cages.

The unit that housed about a dozen youths undergoing severe mental health problems was especially bleak, offering little comfort to those in crisis, said Chris Shank, an attorney with Disability Rights Oregon, an organization that advocates for the legal rights of people with disabilities.

Shank, who has visited MacLaren over the years, said youths in the unit lacked access to the outdoors.

“Surroundings can really impact mental health,” Shank said.

A majority of offenders in the youth authority overall have high rates of diagnosed mental health disorders, according to state statistics. About two-thirds struggle with alcohol or drug dependence and a majority have parents with substance abuse problems.

For those kids, a conventional corrections atmosphere can aggravate severe mental illness, said Erin Fuimaono, assistant director of development services for the youth authority.

“We are doing the best we can with a population that really shouldn’t be in a correctional setting,” she said.

Shank and other youth advocates welcome the upgrades to MacLaren, saying they were long overdue.

“It was rundown,” said Shannon Wight, deputy director of the Partnership for Safety and Justice, a Portland-based policy organization that promotes less reliance on prison and more focus on crime prevention. “They kept it clean, but it was very grim, very outdated and very prison-like.

“To be in a place that felt like a prison for kids felt really inappropriate,” she said.

To brighten the new residential buildings, the architect working on the project for the state paid Portland artist Blaine Fontana $24,000 to collaborate with young offenders to create murals. The large colorful pieces – which feature images like two bears gazing at the woods, a pair of powerful birds in flight and one elephant reaching for another -- are designed to evoke the outdoors and life beyond MacLaren.

The collaboration was fraught at times, given the youths’ gang color affiliations and cultural concerns, but ultimately made sense, said Fontana, who described his own run-ins with the law as a West Coast graffiti artist in his teens.

“They are the ones who will enjoy this, hopefully for just a little while and off they go,” said Fontana.

'I WAS PRETTY BAD'

Fifty-four youths at MacLaren eventually will cycle into state prison, according to the latest tally by the Oregon Department of Corrections.

In Oregon, minors convicted as adults for crimes such as murder, assault, rape and other Measure 11 offenses stay with the youth authority through age 24, a provision implemented in the mid-1990s when voters approved the law. California, Montana and Wisconsin have similar rules that allow juvenile offenders to remain in youth centers into their 20s.

At 25, they’re sent to an adult prison run by the Oregon Department of Corrections.

One of them is John H.

Three years into an 18-year sentence for attempted aggravated murder out of Marion County, John lives in one of the remodeled units, which unlike the newer buildings, is set up like a bunkhouse.

On a recent visit, the 25 beds, each neatly made, were draped in blankets and quilts that gave the institutional space a homier feel. Books about personal finance, barbering, finding happiness, Harry Potter and the Quran were piled on nightstands.

The agency arranged for The Oregonian/OregonLive to interview and photograph John. The news organization agreed not to use his last name at the request of youth authority officials, who said they worried publicity about his case would complicate his efforts at rehabilitation once he’s released.

Small changes, like installing red lights instead of bright white ones that made it hard to sleep, have made a difference, John said. Kids have more personal storage space. The outdoor recreational area has a roof so they can get fresh air even in a rainstorm. Hard plastic chairs in the recreation yard were replaced with benches. Bathrooms were outfitted with features that afford privacy but still allow staff to keep tabs on kids. Bars that covered the windows were taken down. Couches face each other in common spaces, nudging kids to talk to each other.

Rex Emery, who oversees physical plant operations for the youth authority, said administrators wanted to move away from design ideas that emphasize punishment over rehabilitation. And they sought to recreate a warmer environment where teenagers feel more at ease.

“You would have young people with their lives in front of them, trying to get their heads on straight, and we would put them in these concrete rooms and there wasn’t a lot of hope for reformation,” he said.

MacLaren, called Mac by the staff, has been a mixed experience for John.

Here, he’s safe and can learn a skill like barbering. He loves working with MacLaren’s rescued dogs program. He’s a mentor to mentally ill and struggling offenders. He’s always up for a game, like Magic, the popular trading card game, and has even accompanied a stressed-out friend when relatives come to visit.

“A lot of people give up on them,” he said. “I feel like I am the last resort when I talk to these kids.”

He admits he’s a long way from who he was when he entered the juvenile system three years ago.

“I was a terrible person,” he said, adding that he’s grateful no one was injured in the crime he committed at 16. “I was pretty bad.”

Six years from now, he’ll leave MacLaren and head into the state prison system to finish his sentence.

A burly, cheerful 19-year-old who at one point called his remodeled surroundings “lovely,” he, like other young offenders facing long prison stretches, still struggles to comprehend the stark reality of the years that lie ahead.

“I don’t think I will ever adjust to it,” he said, “having this much time.”

-- Noelle Crombie

503-276-7184; @noellecrombie