It’s exactly what you’d expect—but it may be bigger than you’d imagine.

Cameras are not allowed in the Cottage Grove Jail, which, after a recent renovation, now boasts 16 beds instead of its previous eight. But for those of us who have not been initiated into its proceedings (and likely those who have) the jail stands out for the one thing it is not — remarkable.

“Is it Spartan? Yes,” said Police Chief Mike Grover. “Is it clean? Absolutely. It never stinks, and that’s half the battle. But there’s nothing pleasurable about it. It’s exactly what people think a jail should be.”

Nestled in the basement of Cottage Grove’s police station, the jail has housed criminals—first as merely a holding facility and, later, as a municipal jail—since 1976. In the mid-1980s, Cottage Grove tired of paying a fee to Lane County for the privilege of housing municipal offenders (those judged guilty of ordinance violations) in Eugene. Police brought in experts schooled in the art of running a municipal jail, and Cottage Grove began housing its own prisoners.

“We’re seeing a second generation now, and sometimes a third,” Grover said. “We had the parents, and now we’re seeing their kids.”

Last calendar year, the jail saw 549 inmates, all male (the jail doesn’t house females.)

“Isn’t that a high number in a town of less than 10,000 people?” I asked Grover.

“People think this is Mayberry,” he said matter-of-factly. “It isn’t.”

The sickly fluorescent light was the first thing I noticed during a recent tour, provided by Grover and Commander Dan White. Light permeates every crevice of the jail, with white paint throwing that light back in an endless exchange. Everything is painted white; in fact, one prisoner’s attempt to spruce the place up by drawing a stick figure into the paint of his cell earned him 10 extra days, Grover tells me. Cameras document every movement and relay it all to closed-circuit televisions upstairs. Everyday officers are responsible for monitoring the jail, which will operate on a $25,000 budget this year.

“Safety and security are the most important things,” White said.

The halls are tight, almost cramped, and the cells are even tighter. Inmates share a room and sleep on mats laid out over concrete slab bunks. They get three TV dinners a day, dinners stacked tight into a large freezer. When not asleep or eating, inmates work, be it cleaning the jail, washing patrol cars or putting in time at the city shop.

“It depends on the crime and how they behave,” Grover said. “Some people can’t be trusted, so they just sit down there.”

Not many cities house a municipal jail, Grover tells me. Florence hosts a modest jail, and Junction City has a two-cell variety. Oakridge also keeps a cell, but again Cottage Grove is an anomaly, with an operational facility far beyond those of its peers.

A recent stimulus grant provided $14,000 of the $56,000 needed to upgrade the jail. Its plumbing made the move necessary, said City Manager Richard Meyers.

“We had existing cells that were empty, and we were borrowing materials to fix the cells we were using,” he said. “We couldn’t buy parts for the toilets anymore, or the sinks, so we had them replaced. While we were there, we did the work to give us 16 beds.”

Meyers and Grover each praised the work, done mostly by city employees. Grover said the jail will almost never be filled to capacity.

“We’re not just going to fill up the cells,” he said. “We’ll see what we can handle and go from there.”