This presentation is an assessment of the current criminal justice system and if you look at the justice system as a whole, one could break it into categories of: arrest, sentencing, & release; and within each of these categories there remains a long list of issues that need to be addressed. These issues range from police brutality, racial profiling, excessive sentencing, abuse of discretion, rehabilitation, and a broken non-existent state parole system across the United States. If we seek to tackle the difficult issues of our time we must come together willing to talk about the pink elephants in the room and be able to agree on what we can agree on, disagree on what we disagree on, come to a compromise, and not become disagreeable in between here and there.
We will start off by quickly recapping on where the justice system has been, where we are at, and where we, the people, would like to see it go. Second Look Oklahoma is an advocacy group centered around advocating for people entangled in the justice system. Our first goal is always to improve public safety & awareness; While justice is administered through the proper channels, making sure human dignity and fiscal responsibility are adhered to in the most appropriate way possible along the way.
Over the last 50 years the United States Prison system has grown by two million people, with an additional 4 million on probation and parole. Currently Oklahoma’s prison population has been hovering around 21 thousand people in custody with roughly 26 thousand+ on supervision, such as probation and parole, around the state. There have been a lot of growing pains to get where we’re at, but the state is headed in the right direction. One concern that has been a source of trouble for the state in the recent past is the massive undertaking of custody transfer of inmates from county jails around the state to the Department of Corrections. When DOC doesn’t receive DOC ready inmates, this creates a build-up/stacking of inmates in county jails around the state. Oklahoma struggled with this in between 2007-2017. The state has since then, put the appropriate resources in the necessary places and this is not currently an issue in (2022).
The other issue that has been a major source of trouble for the ODOC, which goes hand in hand with receiving people who have been convicted, is the quarterly and yearly matching of discharges to receptions. For roughly the last five years (since 2017) the ODOC has done this.
Obviously when this doesn’t happen in a timely and orderly manner you see what we experienced in 2014, where we had 3,600 people who were “DOC ready” waiting in county jails around the state to be transferred to the DOC.
The ODOC has matched its discharges with receptions for roughly last 5 years, and has managed to retain/ reduce the overall base number. This success is still over shadowed by the people convicted of crimes within the 85% category, which has created a “stacking effect.” This data has already been quantified in multiple reports conducted for the state through private consulting agencies which we’ll review later in this brief.
Armed with this information, the ODOC has been able to reduce their overall population and reduce their overall Department budget. This being said, there still remain issues that need addressed.
Second Look Oklahoma would like offer our assessment and as we begin to unpack all of this information, we would like to acknowledge all of the progress and the successes the state has made over the years concerning the justice system; while duly acknowledging the short comings, so that we might continue to progress as an evolving state with evolving needs.
Washington, D.C. has a strong track record of using funding incentives to shape the landscape of state policy. In 1984 President Ronald Reagan signed a law requiring states to raise the drinking age to 21. Those that refused would lose up to 10 percent of their federal highway funding. This is just one example of how the federal government has incentivized states to change laws across a broad array of issues.
Less than a decade later, the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994
authorized incentive grants to build or expand correctional facilities. Grants totaling $12.5 billion were authorized for incarceration, with nearly 50 percent earmarked for states that adopted tough “truth-in-sentencing” laws that required people to serve substantial portions of their custodial sentences before they could be considered for release.
Written into United States Code Service:
U.S.C.S. Title 34. Crime Control & Law Enforcement, Subtitle (I). Comprehensive Acts,
Chapter 121 – Violent Crime Control & Law Enforcement. Sec. (I) Prisons,
Sec. (I) Violent Offender Incarceration & Truth In Sentencing § 12101 – 12113.
Since the inception of the 85% Rule there has been no correlation between the implementation of this policy and the reduction of violent crimes being committed across the United States. In fact you find the exact opposite; you see people across the United States serving exorbitant amounts of time that are grossly excessive.
As of June 15th 2022; the ODOC had in its custody 20,126 people; the breakdown follows: 10,739 (53%) for crimes that are non-violent, 1,633 (8%) for violent non-85% crimes, 7,754 (39%) for violent 85% crimes.
This is down from the previous years numbers 21,597 total, and 5,528 (25%) for non-violent, 5,543 (26%) violent non-85%, 10,526 (49%) for violent 85%; see chart[s] [1 & 2].11 Please ref. sec. (II).
Looking at these numbers one could say: “Ok, we’re down 1,400+ overall and sustaining;” “we’re down 3 thousand 85%ers… so again, where is the problem..?” The immediate observation regarding the reduction of the 3 thousand individuals serving 85% sentences is sheerly due to that many people being at the end of their sentence and not as a result of policy change; While we experienced an increase of 5 thousand+ non-violent cases.
The state has put a band-aid on a rotten limb; that will only expose itself when it has fallen off. Out of the current 7.7 hundred people reported serving 85% crimes, 3,733+ are sentenced to LWP, LWOP, LWOPE, (17% of the overall ODOC prison population) and these individuals will die in prison short of an intervention from the court, the governor, and/or parole board.
Oklahoma has a non-existent parole system with unreasonable mandatory minimums in place, to where a person who is serving time for a violent 85% percent crime may not receive fair and just review under any circumstances.
There are only a few empirical studies done on parole in Oklahoma and one of the most recent was just submitted June 2022; containing data reaching as far back as 1973 – present. There have been many national studies done on parole across the United States, and this information is nuanced to each state and their specific caveats.
