County’s justice reform efforts worth emulating

IN an op-ed Sunday in The Oklahoman, Thunder chairman Clay Bennett wrote about the important criminal justice reform being undertaken in Oklahoma County. A few lines were particularly noteworthy.

“It’s clear that by using evidence-based decision making and cooperating around a set of defined goals, we can be smarter as a community about how we address those in our criminal justice system,” Bennett wrote. “We cannot cling to the false notion that incarceration is the only or best way to deal with crime.”

Faced with serious safety issues related to chronic overcrowding of the county jail, officials have decided the status quo is no longer acceptable, and they’re trying to do something about it. A task force led by Bennett and comprising law enforcement, business leaders, elected officials and others is striving to find ways to divert offenders from the jail, or to streamline the process so fewer people are held inside the building for months at a time before they ever get to trial.

Progress is occurring, with a 26 percent drop in the number of people sent to the jail for municipal violations during fiscal year 2017. Bennett noted that as these efforts continue, the focus can turn to determining the resources needed for treatment and incarceration.

Demand for substance abuse and mental health treatment leaves publicly funded facilities with long waiting lists. This highlights the importance of privately funded sites such as Arcadia Trails, on the campus of Integris Edmond, which held groundbreaking last week and is set to open in spring 2019. It will have 40 beds for adults whose primary diagnosis is substance use disorder.

It will make an important contribution, but at the state level further strides will come only when lawmakers decide its worthwhile to make additional investments in mental health and substance abuse programs. Doing so would help to reduce the state’s prison population over time, and save the state money.

The Department of Corrections has estimated that four out of every five people who enter its system need mental health or substance abuse treatment. It costs $19,000 per year to incarcerate a person; $23,000 if the person has a severe mental illness. Meantime, it costs the state $2,000 annually for someone to receive treatment through the state’s mental health agency, $5,000 per year for drug court and $5,400 per year for mental health court.

Unfortunately, too many lawmakers seem to be OK with business as usual as it pertains to corrections. This includes watching the number of men and women in DOC custody grow steadily each year — the total eclipsed 63,000 a few weeks ago, a record. Roughly 27,000 of those are behind bars, keeping Oklahoma’s prison buildings constantly above capacity.

DOC Director Joe Allbaugh is planning to release some low-level offenders, in order to clear some space and because he expects little relief from the Legislature in the way of meaningful justice reform. “Essentially, I’m crying ‘help’ and nobody’s listening,” Allbaugh said recently.

That needs to change, as it is in Oklahoma County. Bennett put it well: “We cannot cling to the false notion that incarceration is the only or best way to deal with crime.”