In addition to having custody of offenders sentenced to prison for more than 12 months, the agency provides program evaluation, oversight and funding for the community corrections activities of county governments.

It is also responsible for interstate compact administration, jail inspections, and central information and data services regarding felons throughout the state.

[5] In 1929 Mill Creek Correctional Facility (MCCF) was converted from a state training school to a minimum security prison (previously named Annex Farm).

Shutter Creek Correctional Institution was previously an Air National Guard Radar Station in North Bend and was converted to a minimum security labor camp in 1990.

[15][16] An effort in 1996 had about 12% of Oregon's prisoner population exported to private facilities run by Corrections Corporation of America in Texas and Arizona.

The experiment ended after escapes,[17] sexual contact between guards and inmates at Central Arizona Detention Center,[18] and a controversy related to CCA's housing of 240 Oregon sex offenders in a private facility near Houston Intercontinental Airport.

[19] November 29, 2011 - Officer Buddy R. Herron; killed by a stranded motorist he stopped to assist while enroute to his shift at Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution.

[20] November 17, 1994 - Officer Louis Perrine; killed in an accident while supervising an inmate work detail in Baker County, Oregon.

[21] January 17, 1989 - Director Michael Francke; stabbed to death in the parking lot of the Oregon Department of Corrections headquarters in Salem.

[22] April 7, 1972 - Lieutenant Robert Geer; stabbed to death by an inmate while attempting to subdue him at Oregon State Penitentiary.

[23] April 11, 1969 - Officer Alvin Schmitt; succumbed to injuries sustained 2 days earlier when attacked by an inmate with an edged weapon at Oregon State Penitentiary.

The Oregon Department of Corrections are being sued by five current and former inmates of CCFI for allegations of rape, groping, assault, and molestation at the hands of a nurse in the medical unit, Tony Klein.

Oregon State Police investigation found that Klein had been reported by 11 inmates for some type of sexual contact and was not charged by the Washington County District Attorney's Office due to accounts being "unreliable".