Right On Crime: Efforts To Make Oklahoma Laws Fit The Crime
Right on Crime director: Efforts to make Oklahoma laws fit the crime
BY ADAM LUCK
Oklahoma imprisons a larger percentage of its population that 47 other states. The state’s prison population grew 7.4 percent, or close to 2,000 inmates in the last 12 months. This growth rate will likely mean Oklahoma is now one of the top three fastest-growing prison systems in the country.
While much of this growth can be attributed to the shift in policy initiated by Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton to move offenders from county jails into DOC facilities, the fact remains the Oklahoma justice system relies on imprisonment far more than the rest of the country. Our already overcrowded prison system is now at 111.36 percent capacity, meaning we’re housing over 2,100 inmates beyond the “operating capacity” of our prisons, which includes temporary beds placed in dayrooms and common areas.
The situation is even more urgent when we consider that our prison facilities are now holding significantly more inmates than their “rated design capacity” or the number of inmates the facility was originally designed and built to safely house. We must acknowledge the impact of our growing prison population and recognize the urgent need for change.
We can look to other states that have successfully reduced their prison populations without sacrificing public safety. Texas has closed three state prisons and eight juvenile facilities since 2007 while also bringing about the lowest crime rates the state has seen since 1968. The reforms passed by the Texas legislature affected many areas of the criminal justice system but focused primarily on diverting suitable nonviolent offenders from state prisons to cost-effective alternatives such as drug courts. The reforms began with eight bills and were followed by another round of legislation two years later, which illustrates these legislators understood that in order to bring about meaningful change, they would need multiple levers to address various aspects of their criminal justice system that contributed to their incarceration crisis.