‘We can’t sustain this’
When putting people in jail doesn’t work, there is a need for diversion programs
Inside the downtown Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce on a warm May morning, the point man for criminal justice reform in Oklahoma County sits across a table in a Spartan meeting room.
Alex Roth will be here for months. A former public defender in New Hampshire, Roth, dressed neatly in business attire, occasionally covers his mouth in thought, checks notes on a legal pad and considers the work ahead.
“It’s difficult when you have practices, things that everyone’s been doing for years or decades, and even more so for people who are now holding office, who are elected,” he says. “It’s very hard for them to say, ‘Yeah, change that.’”
Roth is with the nonprofit Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based group hired by the chamber to examine the criminal justice system, and the dangerously overcrowded Oklahoma County jail.
After forming the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Task Force in 2015 — in response to a federal investigation into the jail — the chamber has spent $500,000 for Vera to conduct an initial survey of the criminal justice system, a full study culminating in a December report, and for Roth to help ensure local leaders are implementing recommendations.
Broadly, those recommendations include improved oversight and accountability in the criminal justice system, cutting the number of nonviolent offenders booked into the county jail, streamlining cases, expanding diversion programming, and blunting the impact of court costs and fines, which helps drive repeated returns behind bars.
Indeed, many local leaders suggest that simply building a bigger jail will not solve the deeply rooted problems facing the Oklahoma County criminal justice system, crippled as it is by understaffing and an overflow of low-level offenders who cannot afford the bail it takes to get out of jail.
Inmates who haven’t been found guilty of a crime may wait weeks, or months, for their date with justice.
“So many people lose everything economically,” says Roy Williams, chamber president and CEO. “They lose their home, their kids, their car because of the criminal justice system they get caught up in, because of the nontreatment of mental illness or drug abuse.”
‘Dying for space’
Against the sparkling backdrop of Oklahoma City’s downtown development, the county jail for more than two decades has stood as a ponderous monument to criminal justice system failures.
Inmates escaped within weeks of the jail’s opening in 1991. Early critics bemoaned shoddy glass windows, floors that did not correctly slope toward drains, and porous walls among other low-grade features.
As conditions worsened at the jail — from sewage problems and kitchen malfunctions to triple-celling and inmate deaths — the facility, operated by the sheriff’s department, eventually fell under the scrutiny of the U.S. Department of Justice.
And it is not just the poor conditions and overcrowding, but the mix of inmates that also poses problems. In addition to separating males from females, providing the proper spaces for those with mental illness and protecting inmates who may be witnesses in a case, officers also must segregate dangerous inmates, such as gang members.
“You got all this separation that has to take place to operate the jail safely and it really limits you on the existing jail spaces you have,” Interim Sheriff P.D. Taylor says.
The problems don’t affect inmates only. The medical director and the chief of psychiatry are working out of cells converted to offices, Jail Administrator Jack Herron says.
“I’m dying for space now,” he says. “There’s really nothing else that can be done.”
Which is why Roth is in town. Reform work here, with the baby steps of committees taking shape and various agencies examining their own practices, remains slowgoing as departments are not in the habit of talking to each other.
On top of Vera’s recommendations to local leaders, Roth adds another: pick up the phone. He was stunned, when, during the formation of a committee, with Herron in attendance, a municipal court representative said public defenders could only see their clients once a week in jail.
“Jack Herron said, ‘Really, this is the first time I’ve heard of it,’” Roth recalls. “That’s a perfect example to me. If someone would just pick up the phone, he’s very receptive to changes, and he wants to make things work. If someone had just picked up the phone and said, ‘Hey look, we’ve got this problem, where people are sitting in jail because these lawyers can’t get in to see their clients, is there anything you can do about it?’ Maybe it’s not possible, maybe it’s an issue of space. But he certainly would have tried everything he could to make it happen.”
Questioning state questions
In November, voters passed State Question 780, which reclassifies simple drug possession and property crimes of under $1,000 as misdemeanors instead of felonies. Its companion bill, SQ 781, will direct any savings toward diversion programs, proponents say.
The leading advocate for the bills, Kris Steele, former Republican speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives and executive director of nonprofit The Education and Employment Ministry, says there is more addiction and mental health treatment work needed than resources available.
“The reality is we need to do more to address the pathways that lead to incarceration and ultimately work to help a person not continue down a path of crime,” he says.
Still, some say the voter-approved laws will discourage people from seeking treatment.
District Attorney David Prater says those arrested several times for misdemeanor offenses, and who do not face felony charges, see no reason to seek treatment as a diversion from prison.
And if they genuinely wanted help, there are too few options in the state, and they may not be able to afford the programs that are available.
During an interview in the courthouse, Prater balls his hand into a fist and mocks the idea of threatening drug users with misdemeanors.
“Me saying, ‘I’m gonna charge you with a misdemeanor, Buddy, you need to go to treatment’ — you’re going to go ‘the jails are overcrowded anyway, I’m not going to spend any time in, and I’ll be out very quickly. No big deal,’” Prater says.
Word of this has spread on the streets, he says.
“They all know very well and they talk about it already,” Prater says. “(SQ) 780 passed, they started talking about it. Police officers started hearing, ‘Hey, not much longer, this isn’t going to be a felony, man. You’re not going to be able to do anything to me.’ They know. They’re very savvy.”
Vera researchers agree in their report that the threat of a felony pushes people into programs such as drug court. As for the state questions, Vera researchers say converting felonies to misdemeanors will increase the number of violations punishable by county jail time instead of a stay in state prison, and may possibly contribute to growing populations in local jails.
Still, as misdemeanors draw lower bail amounts, more people may receive pretrial releases. Although SQ 780 and SQ 781 allow more discretion to use community sentencing, “it is impossible to say definitively” how the voter-approved laws will impact Oklahoma County’s jail population, Vera researchers say.
Stalking for money
Walking out of jail a free person does not necessarily mean the criminal justice system is finished with you.
Glenda Ford, a 60-year-old woman who lives on about $780 a month in Social Security, is still paying off more than $1,000 in criminal justice system debt, some of which dates to 1982, when she was arrested for selling drugs.
“You send me away, but stalk me and haunt me for this money,” Ford says.
Ford has been in and out of jail and prison for drug use and selling, but through Steele’s TEEM outreach is working to stay clean. Last September, she faced more time behind bars, for not paying court costs and avoiding community service, with the issues dating to 2006.
TEEM helped her resolve the case through community service and regular drug screenings. Through the mercy of the courts, she is paying off her debt each month, sometimes by as little as $5 at a time, she says.
Judge Donald L. Easter presides over Rule 8 hearings, where he determines a defendant’s ability to pay administrative fines, fees and costs. Easter says he sometimes sees between 100 and 150 cases each day. Rule 8 hearings work fine in the vast majority of cases, he says.
“Vera thinks we should do different things for defendants, but they never seem to get around to recognize that the defendant has an obligation to stay in touch with us,” Easter says. “We can’t read their minds and we don’t know when they have a change of circumstances. I don’t think we should ignore the defendant’s responsibilities to stay in touch with us.”
Still, some say the criminal justice system in Oklahoma County is unfairly punishing the poor through fines and fees.
“It really seems like this is just their way of trying to raise revenue, since it’s so difficult to raise taxes,” Roth says. “And unfortunately, they’re doing that, trying to get money from the poorest people around. It really defeats the purpose of any rehabilitative efforts.”
Bob Ravitz, the public defender for Oklahoma County, agrees, adding that it’s not just court costs, but supervision, drug court and other costs that weigh down those trying to turn their lives around.
“If you got a minimum wage job and can’t pay the costs, you’re actually trying to make it, and then they arrest you because you haven’t paid your costs, or you haven’t paid your district attorney fees, and you get jail for seven days,” Ravitz says.
“You wanna know what happens? You lose that job at McDonald’s, that’s what happens. Then you don’t have anything. So what do you gotta do? You gotta go back out, you gotta feed your family somehow, so you go steal at Dillard’s. That’s what we’re doing to people.”
Vera researchers have called for a statewide audit of court fines and fees, with the goal of creating a uniform cost schedule throughout Oklahoma. They also recommend the state use a sliding scale to reduce court costs and fees — but not fines — imposed on criminal defendants living near the poverty line. A statewide cap on the percentage of income that can be collected for court costs also should be implemented, Vera says.
Ravitz says a judge should have authority to waive whatever costs and fees are appropriate, including that of supervision and other programs.
“There should never be any kind of fee charged to a defendant without it going before a judge and determining his financial eligibility — how much they can pay each month,” Ravitz says. “And whatever the judge says, that’s what the person pays.”
‘We can’t sustain this’
As talk of criminal justice reform continues, the county jail still boils with overpopulation. Between May 1 and May 15, the average daily jail population was 2,358, according to a record provided by the sheriff’s department.
The criminal justice task force is forming several committees, composed of agency leaders throughout Oklahoma City and the county, to share oversight of various aspects of the criminal justice system, and potential reforms.
“A lot of people need to change, do things differently than what they are currently doing,“says Williams, head of the chamber.
An independent coordinating council, made up of county and Oklahoma City leaders, should go a long way toward implementing the reforms that Vera and others are calling for, Williams says.
“If you can’t institutionalize this stuff, it’s all a waste of time,” he says.
Steele says while the courts and prosecutors are somewhat limited in the range of consequences they can impose, the goal of Oklahoma County should be to keep as many people away from the criminal justice system as possible.
People are too quick to give up on others, especially if they struggle with mental illness or drug addiction, he says.
“We are a law-andorder state historically, and so another factor that’s in play is that our elected officials often see a stance of ‘tough on crime’ as being politically advantageous,” Steele says. “A lot of our elected officials historically believe that the way that you deter crime and increase public safety is through mass incarceration, and the research just does not verify that.”
Williams calls on the public to pressure lawmakers and local leaders to back diversion programs and other alternatives to incarceration.
“We can’t continue to stay on the road we’re on,” he says. “We can’t sustain this. It’s out of hand, and the taxpayers are the ones who get the bill.”