Institute report underscores flaws in justice procedures

RESEARCHERS HINT THAT COUNTY JAIL IS ‘DEBTOR’S PRISON’

HOW’S this for an indictment of the processes now in place to handle those arrested and jailed in Oklahoma County? “Currently, money plays an outsized role in who occupies pretrial beds in the Oklahoma County Detention Center.”

That’s the troubling, but not entirely surprising, view of the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonpartisan organization hired by a task force to examine criminal justice in Oklahoma County and recommend potential changes. Those who deal with the system every day have long made the same argument.

One of those is Bob Ravitz, who oversees the county’s indigent defense system. Ravitz knows inside and out a system where bond amounts don’t correlate with the seriousness of the crime, and where the many fees and court costs inundate low-income offenders and give them almost no chance of staying out of jail.

“Every day I see defendants, not counting jail costs … who have $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 in what they owe,” Ravitz told The Oklahoman’s Randy Ellis. “They can’t pay it. What ends up happening is they violate the terms of their probations and they’re put back in jail.”

Researchers from Vera looked at one week of jail bookings in November by the Oklahoma City Police Department. During that time, 622 people were jailed on 2,035 complaints — the result of one complaint being stacked on another. For example, a driver might be cited for a broken tail light, but also for not wearing a seat belt, driving with a suspended license, etc.

Each citation carries its own recommended bail amount. Those amounts are added together, driving up the cost to get out of jail. Those who are unable to pay can wind up waiting in jail for several days before formal charges are filed.

Vera found that 77 percent of those jailed during the one-week period were for misdemeanor or lower crimes. Only 5 percent involved crimes against persons. One other thing: Due to the vagaries of the bail system, those booked on felony complaints are more likely to be released from jail the same day than are those arrested for misdemeanors. How much sense does that make? The answer is very little, which is why the work of Vera and the local task force, made up of 17 community and business leaders, is so important. The county cannot continue to operate in this manner, producing a system that keeps the jail overflowing with men and women who shouldn’t be there.

Roy Williams, chairman of the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and a member of the task force, says those who say offenders should pay the freight for the jail are being unrealistic.

“It’s not that they can just write a check and it solves the problem,” Williams said. Many of those who are jailed “don’t have the money, and if they don’t have the money they sit in jail. And if they sit in the jail, they can’t go to work.” The ramifications thereafter grow worse and worse.

Vera’s researchers will present their reform suggestions at a later time. Those will have considerable bearing on how the county moves forward with its plans to build a new jail. Ideally, the result will be a true overhaul of the system, one that gets away from the “debtor’s prison” now in place and replaces it with one that punishes offenders but doesn’t crush them, while keeping the community safe from serious lawbreakers.