November 18th, 2018 Newsletter
Too Many in Prison?
Try Selling that When the Crime Rate Drops in Oklahoma
Oklahoma #1 in incarceration we are told by articles like this one. To get there these liberal activist groups compute everyone in some sort of confinement including the juvenile facilities, U.S. Marshall detainees, ICE, sex offenders living in the compounds set aside for them after serving a prison sentence, psychiatric hospitals, and all city and county jails in addition to the state prisons and private prisons. Many of the inmates are not Oklahoma cases but are being held for other jurisdictions. The claim is that over 1% of all Oklahomans are incarcerated is more than a bit inflated.
The real number is around three quarters of one percent of the population. We have around 28,000 prison beds. Around 1700 of these are maximum security prisons. Another 13,000 are medium security prisoners, and around 8700 are minimum security prisoners. Around 3000 are in county jails.
About 17,000 of these prisoners are in state run prisons, 6000 are in private prisons, and the rest are community ran centers or halfway houses.
In order to get to the inflated numbers they bring in those serving suspended sentences and deferred sentences and out on parole or probation. Inflating the numbers allows them to skew the statistics and ask for more money each budget year.
If you are a regular reader you know that a criminal has to work very hard to get into prison in Oklahoma. Nearly all of the case studies that we have done over many years show second, third, even fourth chances in the form of deferred sentences or suspended sentences and even when those sentences are revoked for non payment of court fines and fees or for committing another felony, the criminal is usually allowed to pay up their arrears before being sent back to prison.
Then most career criminals use public defenders and OR bond programs so they don't spend money for bail or lawyers. In most cases the fines and court fees are the only financial cost and the majority of the career criminals simply do not pay the fines and fees much less restitution ordered by the court.
Then you have the felony crime amounts that have been doubled in the last few years. As long as your theft is below $1000 per crime you simply get a ticket or a misdemeanor arrest. Smart criminals know to keep the amount below that $1000 and they can commit such a crime every day knowing that they will not have a felony record.
Looking at the numbers we see we need fewer than 2000 maximum security cells, for the worst of the worst. The state would be far better off putting the other 25,000 inmates to work instead of paying $40,000 per year to baby sit them while they read books and lift weight during breaks watching Oprah. The key to this is to use the labor in county facilities in each county with the medium security and medium security inmates doing community work such as caring for the mentally ill, providing services for the poor and indigent, or being hired out for day labor by community businessmen and farmers. Inmates would be learning life skills like showing up for work and keeping an employer or customer pleased, saving money for their release, paying court fines and fees or restitution, and paying for their own cost of incarceration. Even the maximum security prisons could have the majority of the workers be medium or minimum security inmates as long as there were incentives and punishments in place to get compliance with the rules.
Professionals would still be needed in the mental wards but 80% of the staff could be the right kind of inmate. At the end of the day the inmates would be too tired from work to cause trouble or join a gang. Some professional staff positions could be filled by sending long sentenced inmates through school and licensing. Plenty of doctors, nurses, pharmacists and the like already serving time. Allow them to practice their profession behind bars in return for a shorter sentence.
Inmates could also displace a lot of illegal alien workers. We already do this with the halfway houses like the Carver center in Oklahoma City. Half of the worker's check goes to the state, the other half pays off fines, fees, child support, and is saved for when the inmate is released so they can rent an apartment or purchase a car. If the state would simply hire out the labor for say $10.00 per hour and handle the paperwork, insurance, and the rest businesses would flock to use the system for a lot of jobs that have no contact with the general public.
Something has to be done about the inefficient criminal justice system. We have to have cheap prisons or have the inmates paying their own costs of incarceration through labor. And we have to return to catching criminals early before they become career criminals. Three months sentence working the local mental ward wiping butts or cooking meals will teach a teen that crime doesn't pay and both they and society would be a lot better off.
