New commissioners plan to focus on reforming jail
Oklahoma County’s two incoming commissioners say improvements at the county jail will be their top priorities.
District 1 Commissioner Carrie Blumert and District 3 Commissioner Kevin Calvey were sworn in during the Oklahoma County Board of Commissioners’ Wednesday morning meeting. Both Calvey, an attorney and former member of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, and Blumert, a former program director at the Oklahoma CityCounty Health Department, campaigned on the need to end overcrowding and improve conditions at the Oklahoma County jail.
On Thursday, both commissioners called jail conditions, and criminal justice more broadly, one of the most urgent issues facing the county. Although both agree that a new facility is likely the best solution in the long term, the two commissioners said they hoped to pursue other ideas to improve conditions in the near term.
Calvey said he hopes to ensure that the sheriff’s department operates the jail in the most cost-effective manner possible. He also hopes to reduce the jail’s population. People who present a danger to the public belong in jail, Calvey said. But jail might not make the most sense for people accused of nonviolent offenses, he said.
“We need to explore those opportunities, because it doesn’t make sense to put somebody in jail for failure to pay a $200 fine when it costs the county taxpayers more than $200 to put them in jail,” Calvey said.
Eventually, the county will need some new facility — either a new jail, or a smaller, minimum-security facility to house lowerlevel offenders, reducing the population of the existing jail, he said.
Blumert said she hopes to begin building relationships with members of the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council and discuss solutions for the jail. She said she’d like to see the county find ways to use the drug and mental health courts to serve more people who find themselves in the justice system because of mental health and addiction issues.
Blumert said she’s been encouraged by preliminary discussions about a plan to create a center near the jail to work with people who are involved in the justice system. Similar to Palomar, which brings a number of agencies who work with survivors of domestic violence to a single location, the new center would provide a place where people in the criminal justice system could access services like housing and treatment, she said.
“That’s very preliminary, but I would be interested in something like that,” she said.