The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Yet, Oklahoma is loathe to settle for average. Oklahoma, in fact, has
ranked No. 1 for per-capita incarceration of women for years and,
according to the latest figures from the Department of Justice,
Oklahoma ranks fifth highest in the nation in its overall
incarceration rate per capita. With a population of 3.6 million, we
have more than 25,000 people behind bars.

Only Delaware, Louisiana, Alaska, and Texas — in that order — have
higher per-capita incarceration rates. Alaska, with fewer than
700,000 people, has only 5,059 people in prison. Delaware with
850,000 people has 7,206 prison inmates. Texas, with 23 million
people, has 172,116 prison inmates and Louisiana, with 4.2 million
people, has 37,012 inmates.

At the national average, researchers found, Oklahoma would have 22
percent fewer men and 47 percent few women in prisons and jails.

Researchers made other what-if-we-were-average calculations. If the
mix of felons in prison versus those on probation or parole were at
the national average, how would that impact the prison population?
There would be nearly 11,000 fewer inmates behind bars here. That
would translate into an immediate 37 percent reduction in the size of
prisons. Inmates instead would be supervised by parole officers or in
other community-based programs. This appears to be the way a number
of other states keep incarceration rates down.

Despite hand-wringing, umpteen studies and multiple efforts to reduce
Oklahoma's incarceration rate, which now rests at 10.26 percent, our
rate does not come close to the national average of about 7 percent.

I wish that I could report to you that the state is virtually crime-
free because so many criminals are off the streets. That certainly is
not the case.

To understand better why things are the way they are, the Oklahoma
Academy, a nonprofit organization that identifies critical public
policy issues facing the state, recently looked at Oklahoma's
criminal justice system. It went through the same process a decade
ago. There's been no sea-change in the state's approach to crime and
punishment. Instead of the 18,000 inmates we had a decade ago, we now
have more than 25,000.

Oklahoma Academy's bottom line is this: The state prison population
is not going to shrink significantly anytime soon despite a declining
crime rate and reduced inmate admissions. The major reason is because
of a rule requiring 85 percent of sentences be served regardless of
circumstances.

Most of us realize that as a public safety issue it is essential to
keep dangerous criminals behind bars. But in punishing criminals it
is also is important for us to distinguish between those criminals we
are afraid of and those we're just mad at. By putting too many people
behind bars, who might be punished through less expensive means,
Oklahomans punish ourselves. "In accordance with state budget
physics, a dollar spent on 'beans and bullets' for incarcerated
criminals is a dollar not expended elsewhere in our society," academy
researchers observed.

The Oklahoma Academy next month will release recommendations flowing
out of its October Town Hall in Ardmore where experts shared
observations and advice about "Oklahoma-style criminal justice."

With one of the nation's highest incarceration rates, the question at
that Town Hall came down to this: How to punish offenders adequately
and protect the public without punishing excessively and
unnecessarily? While no state probably is satisfied with its
incarceration rate ours clearly is over the top.

How in the world do we become at least average?