Restorative justice needed for females
The Sooner State is known for its pioneering spirit, but it’s not always good to be first. Oklahoma has the highest women’s incarceration rate in the nation, and there’s no end in sight. The state’s correctional population is already at 113 percent of capacity and expected to grow by more than 7,000 people in the next decade — many of whom will be women.
Women who commit crimes in Oklahoma — even nonviolent, drug-related offenses
— are often locked up by default, without consideration of underlying factors like addiction, personal trauma or mental illness. When their issues go unresolved behind bars, they get released only to return to the same behaviors.
If Oklahoma wants to reverse its trend of incarcerating more women for longer periods of time, policymakers must tackle both ends of the issue by enacting sentencing reform and supporting changes to make prisons more restorative. This would reduce crime, prevent victimization and make better use of taxpayer dollars.
On the policy side, the state has taken some important steps to improve women’s prisons. I commend Gov. Mary Fallin for signing several bills that address sentencing and women’s incarceration, helping ensure that punishment is proportional, people are treated with dignity, and families and communities are safer.
These bills are a step in the right direction, but I encourage Oklahoma’s leaders to take additional steps to ensure that punishments meted out to Oklahoma’s mothers, daughters, sisters, and aunts are fair and proportional. Our nation’s decades-long experiment in over-incarceration has shown, over and over, that harsher sentences don’t yield safer streets, and locking women up unnecessarily is a poor use of taxpayer dollars.
Oklahoma should also invest in programs that address issues leading to incarceration. Of the 3,000 women who were incarcerated in Oklahoma at the end of 2017, most had experienced abuse, violence, and family breakdown. Two-thirds of these women presented a moderate or high need for substance abuse treatment, while 70 percent have past or current mental illnesses requiring treatment, like major depression and PTSD. Without a restorative prison environment, these issues are only compounded by incarceration, and as a result, many women are re-arrested shortly after their release, adversely affecting their families and communities.
Prison Fellowship, a nationwide Christian nonprofit that operates programs within the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, is working to restore women who are serving prison sentences, so that when they are released, they’re prepared to contribute to their communities and families, and they are less likely to return to prison. We recently opened the Prison Fellowship Academy, a holistic life transformation program, at a women’s facility in Oklahoma City. We’re working with the forward-thinking DOC leadership, which is actively pursuing more restorative solutions for the women in its custody.
It’s up to Oklahoma’s leaders to pioneer a more restorative criminal justice system, one that invests in the lives of the women in its prisons and dispenses proportional, fair and effective consequences. Let’s lead the way in forging fairer and safer women’s corrections environments — and a safer, fairer, more redemptive society for all Oklahoma families.