After delays, criminal justice reform bills move at Capitol

After almost a year of doubt and weeks of waiting for movement at the Oklahoma Capitol, lawmakers advanced seven bills that would mark the state’s next step in criminal justice reform.

Senate Floor Leader Greg Treat said the proposals that could reach Gov. Mary Fallin’s desk this week are significant to reducing Oklahoma’s prison population, but he acknowledged there’s still more work to do. “If we take all the bills together, (it) will have a drastic impact on beds in the prison system in Oklahoma,” said Treat, R-Oklahoma City. “It will not eliminate the problem of overcrowding, but it will definitely slow the growth.”

Treat said the changes would reduce the estimated number of future prison beds needed by more than 9,000 if all bills are signed into law. Treat, who has been elected to lead the Senate next year, said he wants to do more criminal justice reform.

“I hope it’s not a task force next year. I hope we work through the interim with the district attorneys and advocates,” he said, referencing

prosecutors’ calls for updating how Oklahoma classifies crimes.

Treat said he will also uphold the intent of State Questions 780 and 781, the statewide votes that changed drug possession from a felony to misdemeanor and designed a framework for more mental health and substance abuse treatment. The proposals advanced Tuesday seem to adhere to the voters’ intent by focusing less on harsh prison time and more on finding the right punishment.

“Everything we’ve done here is in line with criminal justice reform that was within (the state questions),” he said. “The people overwhelmingly passed them, and nothing we’ve done or nothing I plan to do is going against the will of the people as expressed in those two votes.”

Andrew Speno, Oklahoma director of the criminal justice reform organization Right on Crime, cautioned that the final version of the legislation doesn’t achieve all of the goals laid out in the original bills introduced more than a year ago, or in the governor’s task force on criminal justice reform.

A political blockade effectively killed the bills last session but Fallin, legislative leaders and an unlikely ally, prosecutors, agreed on language that was revealed in March.

“They are diluted from their original form. While they’re a critical next step, they are far from the last step,” Speno said. “At this point, we’re doing better but we’re still on an upward trajectory (of prison population). We need to reverse it so we’re actually going down over 10 years.”

The bills

• Senate Bill 649 targets “sentence enhancements,” which can quickly tack on extra prison time for repeat offenders. It would keep prosecutors from seeking harsher sentences if the suspect was previously convicted of a drug-related or property crime.

• Senate Bill 650 would let offenders request their criminal record be expunged after five years as long as they stay out of trouble. Being able to erase a felony conviction would eliminate one of the barriers that keeps people with prison records from getting a job after they serve their time.

• Senate Bill 689 modifies the long sentences given out for drug trafficking. It would let courts reduce life-without-parole sentences if the convicted has served at least 10 years, and other sentences to at least 25 percent of the original term length.

• Senate Bill 786 would define a new crime, burglary in the third degree, which would apply to vehicle theft. It would also remove the mandatory minimum sentence for second-degree burglary. Under current law, someone breaking into a vehicle could serve two to seven years in state custody. The proposal requires no prison time and limits sentences to five years.

• Senate Bill 793 eliminates the life without parole option for drug possession with intent to distribute, distribution, manufacturing and trafficking, and eliminates most of the law’s mandatory minimum sentences.

Those bills were adopted by the Senate on Tuesday. The following bills passed the House. Each piece of legislation now has to be heard in the opposite chamber before heading to the governor.

• House Bill 2281 would create a new, tiered structure for property crimes based on the value of the goods, with crimes involving things valued at less than $1,000 becoming misdemeanors.

• House Bill 2286 streamlines the administrative parole process. The convicted must serve at least one-fourth of their original sentence, and the new guidelines would set standards for parole. Parole would not be available for someone convicted of a violent crime, a felony sex crime or a crime punished by death or life without the possibility of parole. It also sets guidelines allowing the parole of elderly and medically frail inmates.