Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Oklahoma prosecutors fight prison reform
Bipartisan support for change meets obstacle
OKLAHOMA CITY — Since the days of frontier justice, lawmakers in conservative Oklahoma have viewed harsh prison sentences as the politically expedient solution to crime, including nonviolent offenses.
That approach has imposed a high price, leaving the state with the nation’s highest incarceration rate, overcrowded prisons and skyrocketing costs. Now, after years of steady debate, there’s growing agreement — even among conservatives — that changes are needed.
But the fragile consensus has crashed headlong into a towering obstacle: the entrenched ideology of the state’s top prosecutors, many of whom have made political careers out of padding their conviction rates.
The powerful elected district attorneys are lagging “behind the will of the people,” said state Rep. Cory Williams, a five-term Democrat who is running to be one of the state’s 27 district attorneys. “I think the public thinks we can do things differently, and I think our current DAs do not.”
The current Republican governor, Mary Fallin, backs the push to steer more nonviolent offenders into alternatives to prison. And in 2016, a ballot measure to reduce penalties for drug possession and property crimes passed with nearly 60 percent support, even though district attorneys and law enforcement were fiercely opposed.
Those changes and others the Legislature approved this year are expected to slow the prison population’s growth. But it is still on pace to expand by 25 percent by 2026.
“Right now, we’re incarcerating people we’re mad at. We’re not really afraid of them,” said Tulsa businessman Kevin Stitt, the Republican candidate for governor. “I’ll lead on this effort to turn that around.”
Kris Steele, a Baptist minister and former Republican speaker of the Oklahoma House, is leading a coalition of political, business and community leaders dedicated to reducing the state’s prison population. The group spearheaded the 2016 ballot question, and he said another initiative is possible.
Still, the district attorneys wield tremendous power and influence over state lawmakers and policymakers. Although district attorneys stand for election every four years, they often don’t draw an opponent.
After a package of bills aimed at reducing the prison population gained bipartisan support last year, a prosecutor-turned-legislator managed to bottle them up in a committee despite the objections of the governor. When similar bills were introduced again this year, district attorneys worked to water them down.
Brian Hermanson, a prosecutor in northern Oklahoma who heads the state DA’s association, said prosecutors want to be part of a solution, but he fears that some of the suggested changes could threaten public safety.
“Does it help improve public safety, or are you just letting people out of prison because there are too many bodies in there?” Hermanson asked.
He said people he sends to prison are either violent offenders or have extensive criminal records.
But more than half of those sentenced to prison in Oklahoma for nonviolent offenses have one or zero prior felony convictions, according to a state task force report from last year. The study also found that 75 percent of Oklahoma prisoners were sentenced for nonviolent crimes.
The cost to families is harder to calculate. Angela Nelson had three children when she did her first 18-month stint in an Oklahoma prison at age 24 for writing a bogus check. The kids ended up scattered among relatives, and her daughter ended up in foster care.
With no driver’s license or job prospects and still facing steep fines and fees after she got out of prison, Nelson got trapped in a cycle of poverty, crime and addiction that landed her back in prison.
“It felt like one day I was a kid, the next day I was a pregnant teenager, and things just went from bad to worse,” said Nelson, who finished her most recent stint in March and now works two jobs.