The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Report Co-Chairman Marc Edwards, an Oklahoma City attorney,
said the “85-percent rule” was initially adopted in 1996 along
with a new sentencing matrix, which was jettisoned while the
85-percent requirement remains in place.

Neville Massie, executive assistant to the corrections
director, said a recent audit showed that most of the growth in
the state’s prison population is attributable to the longer
sentences required under laws such as the 85-percent rule.

Other recommendations include reducing incarceration of women
and preventing people from entering the prison system through
increased use of alternatives such as drug courts, more
regional and community alternatives and addressing addiction
and mental health issues.

Academy Chairman Howard Barnett said the report is the result
of work that began at a three-day town-hall conference in
Ardmore last October.

Secretary of State Susan Savage said the academy took on a
tough issue, one that is always at the forefront of legislative
and budgetary matters.

Savage said addressing some issues can only be accomplished
over the long term.

“It is not a quick fix,” she said.

Former state Rep. David Braddock said improving the state’s
criminal justice system is the right thing to do, but a
difficult task from which some lawmakers shrink for political
considerations.

Braddock said Oklahoma’s “tough on crime” stance has been used
by opponents to defeat some more reform-minded legislators.

“Our job, if anything, is to point out that the system is not
working,” he said.

Braddock said statistics such as being number one in the
incarceration of women are unacceptable.

“We need some common-sense, intelligent reforms that will serve
us better for the future,” he said. “We can change Oklahoma’s
criminal justice system, but it has to be ‘we.’”

Braddock said the state is in for a “huge train wreck,” with
the possibility of a $1.5 billion corrections budget in 10
years, if nothing is done.

Former state Sen. Cal Hobson said the state has pulled back on
laws that provided for some relief on the prison population by
releasing some inmates early, as well as adopting the
85-percent rule, which originally targeted only severe crimes
deemed the “seven deadly sins.” He said it now covers about 19
offenses.

“There’ll be more by May,” Hobson said, referring to the end of
the legislative session.

Hobson said Oklahoma’s corrections budget is “number three and
battling to be number two.”

He pointed out that the cap law was enacted in the early 1980s,
when the state faced a fiscal problem due to plummeting oil
prices.

“This problem will only be solved in a time of crisis,” Hobson
said.

Lawmakers were recently told they will have much less to
appropriate this session than last.

Commissioner Terri White, of the Oklahoma Department of Mental
Health and Substance Abuse Services, outlined her agency’s
“Smart on Crime” proposal, which calls for addressing addiction
and mental illness as the diseases science has proven them to
be, to stem the flow into the prison system of individuals who
suffer from them.

“If we locked up people for having diabetes, there would be a
public outcry,” White said.

The proposal also calls for screening, prevention and
intervention strategies to identify these issues early on, as
well as treatment of those incarcerated.

The agency estimates that the plan will cost about $30 million
per year.

White also said that 76 percent of women in Oklahoma prisons
have some form of mental illness, compared with about 40
percent of men.

Massie said meeting the needs of women in prison involves
addressing issues such as trauma and abuse, which many female
inmates have experienced in their private lives, as well as
their responsibilities regarding children.
Bruce DeMuth, chief of staff with the Oklahoma Department of
Career Technology and Education, stressed the need to improve
Oklahoma’s educational statistics, as a way to reduce the
prison population.

He said that in Oklahoma about 62 percent of inmates are high
school dropouts.

Improving the state’s graduation rate by just 6.4 percent would
increase overall income by $830 million, the gross state
product by $2 billion and state revenues by $76 million, DeMuth
said.

The Rev. Stan Basler, director of Criminal Justice and Mercy
Ministries at Oklahoma Conference United Methodist Church, said
the best policy is to keep people from going to prison in the
first place. However, he said the state needs to do more to
assist those just-released from prison, who face hurdles in
securing housing, jobs and other support, as well as basic
items such as driver’s licenses.