Tuesday, December 8, 2009 by BARBARA HOBEROCK - World Capitol Bureau

OKLAHOMA CITY — An Oklahoma City lawmaker on Tuesday said she will introduce legislation to eventually remove the governor from the parole process.

Sen. Constance Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, said her measure would make a recommendation from the state Pardon and Parole Board be approved if the governor failed to act on it within 30 days. However, the governor would still be involved in the process for heinous crimes, such as murder and rape, she said.

Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, had filed similar legislation in the past. It passed the House, but it did not get heard in the Senate, Johnson said.

Johnson said her legislation would allow for a trial period and then put the issue of removing the governor entirely from the process to a vote of the people, something which voters have not approved in the past.

But Johnson said there is growing momentum for removing the governor from the process. "As it is, Oklahoma is the only remaining state where the governor is involved in the parole process," Johnson said.

The Board of Corrections supports removing the governor from the process as a means to reduce incarceration rates.

John Pearson, chairman of Citizens for Responsible Parole, said the state's current budget crisis will give lawmakers the "cover" they need to vote for Johnson's bill.

State agencies have been told to reduce budgets by 5 percent through the remainder of the fiscal year, with deeper cuts possible, as a result of a significant decline in state revenue.

The Oklahoma Department of Corrections has a budget of about half a billion dollars, yet the agency is still severely underfunded, Pearson said.

Pearson said there is widespread support for removing the governor from the parole process.

The Oklahoman Editorial Published: December 3, 2009

Would Oklahomans vote to remove the governor from the parole process? It's a rhetorical question, because voters aren't likely to get that opportunity any time soon.

The Legislature must first approve sending such a question to a vote of the people. The chances of that happening are remote. Most members, particularly the Republican-controll

by: JULIE DELCOUR Associate Editor - Sunday, November 29, 2009

A year ago, shortly before the recession kicked the stool out from under state revenues, Oklahoma Academy researchers asked what it would take to put Oklahoma at the national average in incarceration rates.

This is what it would take: The immediate release of 9,000 inmates, including half the women behind bars.

Don't worry, we're not about to reach the national average, which is at least three percentage points lower than Oklahoma's rate of incarceration. But if we did, the savings would be significant — more than $100 million annually. But Oklahoma is loathe to stoop to the national average. The history of corrections over the past 30 years shows that we'd rather be safe than sorry in spite of the fact that all this incarceration has not greatly reduced crime rates.

So, for more than a decade, we've maintained a No. 4 ranking nationally in overall per-capita incarceration rates, and No. 1 for women. Oklahoma has about 640 inmates per 100,000 population.

Part of the crowd: Oklahomans have so many people in prison because Oklahomans want that many people in prison, and apparently don't mind paying the bill even if it includes shorting education, transportation and various human services. The state spends roughly the same amount of money to keep an inmate behind bars for a year as it would cost to send a student to a state college.

Since the fiscal year began July 1, the prison population has grown by more than 300 inmates, with 1,600 felons backed up in county jails awaiting cells. They're backed up because there's no more room at the inn, says the innkeeper, Department of Corrections Director Justin Jones. The prisons are at capacity and have been for quite some time.

Jones has other worries as well. He only has three-quarters of the correctional officers he's authorized to have. The 5 percent budget cuts in force for several months have:

•Reduced private prison and halfway house contracts. The census in halfway houses actually has dropped almost 20 percent during the past two years.

•Reduced services in the successful community corrections program.

In March, furlough days for employees other than correctional officers begin.

If all this budget-cutting continues, reaching the national average might become a necessity. But rest assured, it will not occur through thoughtful, rational reform. Instead, it could be forced by fiscal realities.

Already, the governor and legislative leaders are talking about what could happen if revenues continue to plummet and agencies are required to take cuts greater than 5 percent.

If the worst happens and 10 percent budget cuts were imposed, mass commutations of inmate sentences is not out of the question although, realistically, other measures probably would be taken before that occurred.

Even at a 7.5 percent reduction level, the effects would be severe. Three inmate work centers would close, as would some probation offices. DOC would have to slow-pay $10 million in medical costs to delay payment into the next fiscal year. All employees except correctional officers would go on probationary status.

The intensity of this crisis could have been lessened. For instance, if an inmate is convicted on separate charges in two different counties, sentences for the two charges usually don't run concurrently — they run consecutively, meaning the inmate stays in prison longer. If applied retroactively, the annualized cost of this approach amounts to $10 million. Attempts to get a legislative hearing on the issue have failed as have so many efforts to reform sentencing.

DOC also continues to house medically fragile inmates, including some on respirators who cost the state $1 million a year. Medical paroles — for an inmate who no longer is a public safety threat so is sent home or elsewhere to die — seldom are granted. (I'll leave a discussion of cost-shifting for another day). Cost will continue to climb as health care costs rise, as the prison population ages and as the number of life-without-parole sentences goes up.

The Oklahoma Academy report on the state criminal justice system is the second it's undertaken. Ten years ago Oklahoma had 18,000 inmates. Now it has 25,000.

The state prison population is not going to shrink significantly anytime soon mainly because of a law requiring that for certain offenses 85 percent of a sentence must be served regardless of circumstances.

Who is punished: Most of us realize that as a matter of public safety it is essential to keep dangerous criminals behind bars. But in punishing lawbreakers it's important to distinguish between those we fear and those we're just mad at. By putting too many people behind bars, who might be punished through less expensive means, such as community sentencing, Oklahomans punish themselves.

"In accordance with state budget physics, a dollar spent on 'beans and bullets' for incarcerated criminals is a dollar not expended elsewhere in our society," academy researchers observed.

With one of the nation's highest incarceration rates, the question comes down to this:

How do we adequately protect the public and adequately punish offenders — without doing so to an extent that we short-change other areas of service?

While no state probably is satisfied with its incarceration rate, Oklahoma's is clearly over the top.

How much longer can we afford to stay above average?

by Rev. Stan Basler - March 4, 2009

One of the enigmas in the Oklahoma criminal justice system is public policy that promotes public safety by using long prison sentences coupled with systemic obstacles to parole supervision upon release. Most persons would agree that the public is safer when released prisoners are supervised and assisted in transition by parole officers.

Oklahoma remains the last state in which the governor's signature is required on every parole. The audit conducted by MGT of America for the Legislature a couple of years ago cited this reality as one obstacle to reducing correctional expense.

Until recently, there has been a labor shortage in Oklahoma. Releasing prisoners to parole when the availability of employment is high is a win/win scenario. Ex-prisoners working as taxpayers and supervised in the process is ideal, since parole conditions include paying outstanding obligations and mental health and substance abuse treatment where needed.

According to a presentation by the Criminal Justice Resource Center in 2007, many Oklahoma prisoners bypass the parole process and serve their entire sentence. That decision does not reflect a pro-social attitude. Making the parole process arduous, seemingly unrelated to good behavior and highly politicized isn't likely to induce pro-social thinking in offenders. The same study showed a significant number of prisoners were released to probation supervision, but this was after parole eligibility did not materialize.

The pattern is that the political party the governor doesn't belong to scrutinizes each parole decision looking for ammunition to use at election time. Therefore, the governor is on secure footing politically in denying paroles if there is any risk of political fallout. The efforts of a thorough and conscientious pardon and parole board become subordinate to political considerations. Prisoners understand that receiving parole has a slight and contingent relationship to personal improvement efforts and good behavior.

In the event the governor does sign the parole, it is 76 days on the average after the parole board has acted. Many times, the prisoner is so near release that parole is meaningless. Sometimes, home offers and job offers may have disappeared in the interim.

The governor's role in parole is constitutional. The Legislature cannot change it. It can put the matter to a vote of the people. A ballot issue needn't remove the governor from all situations. Hopefully, there is political will to offer a bill for a vote of the citizens on this matter.

The MGT audit recommended it. The Oklahoma Academy has recommended reducing the role of the governor in the parole process. Both the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church (of which I am a member) and the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma at annual meetings have endorsed removing the governor from the parole process.

This session is not an election year. It is a year where budgetary shortages loom. It seems like a good time to let the people vote on whether or not parole is good public safety.

Basler is director of criminal justice ministries for the Oklahoma Conference of the United Methodist Church.

by: JULIE DELCOUR Associate Editor - Sunday, March 01, 2009

After midnight, in the stillness of the Governor's Mansion, Oklahoma's chief executive clocks in for the graveyard shift.

Alone in his family room, Gov. Brad Henry will work nearly to dawn, several nights a week, studying reports and recommendations from the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board, an appointive body that reviews all parole requests before sending them to Henry for final decision. With painstaking attention Henry will consider input from those favoring and opposing release — especially those impacted by the crime.

Henry enjoys the dubious distinction of being the only governor in the nation who signs off on all paroles. If he grants clemency he often performs a second step, setting special conditions of release such as drug screening or electronic monitoring to help safeguard the public and head off future crimes.

Oklahoma has the lowest parolee recidivism rate in the nation, he claimed in a recent interview. "I have been very lucky. I take this very seriously and this takes a lot of my time — close to 20 hours a week. I do them at night because there are too many interruptions during the day. This might sound strange but I've come to enjoy it. I'm the extra set of eyes."

And so, for six years, Henry has repeated his wee-hours ritual, a somewhat surreal scene that should tell Oklahomans two things: One, that he does not sleep much. And, two, Oklahoma needs a more efficient way of handling paroles than placing them in the hands of the busiest person in the state.

From 2002 to 2008, Henry's clemency workload ranged from 1,210 requests to 2,731 annually. Elsewhere this task is ceded to a professional parole board, which is exactly what Oklahoma should do.

Except in cases involving the most high-risk violent offenses, the state needs the governor out of the process.

Don't count on that happening this legislative session when lawmakers probably will do what they've done before — ignore advice of criminal justice task forces and experts, legislative studies, the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission, the Oklahoma Academy, and even an $844,000 independent audit of the prison system in 2007. Apparently, no political will exists to put the question before the people, and without a constitutional amendment the governor retains a task simply too large for any one person.

It shows. What might have worked decades ago with a few thousand inmates does not work well with a prison population of 25,000. In 2007, a U.S. Department of Justice report concluded that Oklahoma paroled fewer inmates than any other state.

This archaic and unnecessary step of keeping the governor in the process can slow down the system, cost the state money and creates political issues. And should a parolee commit a violent offense the governor quickly becomes a lightning rod for public frustration, which is what happened in 1996. Freed on an early-release program, Lamonte Fields a few days later killed his girlfriend and her parents and was himself killed by police. Gov. Frank Keating reacted by cancelling early-release programs. Paroles immediately fell by 10 percent and have remained low.

Whether it's a governor or a professional parole board signing off on releases, caution and deliberation are needed. But in 2006, delays apparently cost the state $3 million. That year Henry received 1,644 parole requests. By November of 2007 he had approved 1,139 and rejected 196.

"Unfortunately politics are involved in almost every aspect of the capitol and yes, many have played politics with the parole process, with this governor and any previous governors," said Paul Sund, Henry's spokesman. "Gov. Henry has been routinely criticized for not approving enough paroles by some and for approving too many by others. It is a no-win situation for any governor but it is the law and a matter of public safety that must be addressed, regardless of the political consequences."

According to the 2007 legislative study requested by Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, parole recommendations remained on the governor's desk 300 percent longer than five years before.

"We can't hide from the fact that our prisons are bursting at the seams," she said. "While there are dozens of reasons for that problem, the Legislature has the responsibility of looking at every area and determining where efficiency can be gained. ... Our parole process is unnecessarily bottle-necked by the governor's office. We could save a lot of money and reduce the strain ... by streamlining our system."

Fat chance. What happens in 49 other states do apparently doesn't matter. Senate Pro Tem Glenn Coffee, R-Oklahoma, said as much recently when he reiterated personal opposition to removing the governor from the process.

"Others would argue it would reduce incarceration rates. ... The flip side of that is, yes, it would reduce them but at a cost. I think you'd see more violent offenders released, and we've seen time and time again the public doesn't have a stomach for that."

Maybe he's right — that, in a state ranking near the top of the Free World in the number of offenders per capita it sends to prison, voters don't have the stomach for change. But what if Glenn Coffee is wrong?

It would be nice to find out.

by Julie Dlcour - Associate Editor - Tulsa World - November 16, 2008

The group of social workers had spread out their picnic on the riverbank when a baby came floating by. Without pause, they sprang into action, saving the child. Soon they saw a second baby coming downstream, then another and another. As they again swam to the rescue they noticed that a member had not followed them into the water and instead was walking away, headed up river.

"Where are you going?" one called. "Why aren't you helping us?"

"I'm going upstream," she said, "to find out who's throwing babies into the river and stop them."

Attorney General Drew Edmondson related that allegory, as told to him by his wife, Linda, in a white paper for the recent Oklahoma Academy's Town Hall, which focused on "Oklahoma Style Criminal Justice."

While not quite as poetic, Edmondson could have shown the movie, "Groundhog Day," to make his point about Oklahoma's recurring responses to the recurring challenges in its criminal justice system and overcrowded prisons.

"We respond to increased criminal activity with harsher punishments and mandatory minimums," he said. "We respond to prison overcrowding by building new prisons and contracting with private prisons. We respond to budget crunches by understaffing our prisons and underpaying our corrections employees. And, nobody seems to be going upstream to find out who is throwing the babies into the river."

Nearly a year ago, results came in from an $800,000 independent audit, commissioned by the Legislature's Republican leadership. While professionally researched and skillfully presented, the report pretty much told us what we already know: too many inmates for a state this size, inadequate facilities and too few punishment options beyond incarceration. For all our toughness on crime, criminalizing most everything short of flatulence has not made the public much safer.

No softie on the criminal element, Edmondson reflected that when he was a prosecutor he avoided putting social worker-types on a jury because they did not like putting anyone in prison. "But they were awfully good at pointing out the underlying problems associated with criminal activity and incarceration. It is not rocket science."

A short list, he said, includes: broken homes, child abuse, inadequate nutrition during pregnancy and early childhood, unwanted pregnancies, availability and use of alcohol and drugs during pre- teen and teen years, shortages of counseling services in schools, too few drug and alcohol treatment programs and a lack of caring adult role models.

These factors, Edmondson believes, put the babies in the river and land them in prison as adults.

To correct the problem takes patience, political will and short-term sacrifice "because putting more money into health, mental health and education in a way to impact crime and corrections will not produce immediate effects; they will be long term."

He estimates it could take up to 15 or 20 years to seriously reduce the state's 25,000- inmate prison population.

The question, as we head toward a new Legislature in February, is whether lawmakers will fund and adopt some of the ideas Edmondson and other Academy leaders spoke of in the white paper and during the October town hall in Ardmore. The Academy will release follow-up recommendations later this year. It is clear what some of that advice might be.

While Oklahoma has expanded drug courts that allow offenders to remain in the community under strict requirements, more alternatives to incarceration are needed, coupled with drug and alcohol treatment programs.

The governor should be taken out of the parole process as is done in the other 49 states.

"We must intervene early when parents, teachers and counselors spot future problems. We should expand and lower the age for pre-K learning programs," Edmondson said.

"We must be willing to risk failure with innovative approaches and community programs that test new ground. We must work with our faith community to strengthen families. Moreover, we must work with our human services agencies to intervene e/ectively and rapidly when families fail and children are at risk."

All of the above are effective crime fighters. They've helped in other places that do not rank first in the nation per capita in female incarceration and fourth in incarceration of men.

When the Academy's findings come out, every lawmaker should read them with an open mind. Using the same approach used for decades is not working. Oklahomans must telegraph the message to elected o*cials that it is politically acceptable, as Edmondson suggests, "to risk failure with innovative approaches and community programs that test new ground."

If we do those things, if we go upstream, just maybe fewer babies will end up in the river.  

Crunch Offers Chance for New Look at Corrections

The Oklahoman Editorial January 19, 2010

AFTER reading comments made last week by frustrated members of the state Board of Corrections, we couldn't help but think back to the chief recommendation made in late 2007 by auditors who, at the Legislature's behest, spent months (and nearly $1 million) studying Oklahoma's correctional system.

Auditors for MGT of America suggested that Oklahoma remove the governor from routine parole cases — we're the only state that requires the governor to approve every parole. Oklahoma's parole rate at the time of MGT's audit was 18 percent; the state Pardon and Parole Board recommends parole for 30 percent to 35 percent of those who are considered.

"In terms of risk level, about 75 percent of the cases heard (by parole board) are at low to moderate risk of recidivism," auditors said. "This indicates that a significant proportion of the eligible parole population pose an acceptable risk for parole." And, as such, shouldn't require the governor's OK before those paroles can be granted.

Removing the governor from all but the most heinous cases would ease prison crowding, auditors said, and save money — about $40 million over 10 years. Yet more than two years after the audit's release, Oklahoma voters are no closer to deciding whether they want to make that change to the state's constitution because legislative leaders haven't been interested in sending it to a vote. They're fine with the status quo because their constituents aren't clamoring for a change.

It should come as no surprise, then, that the Republican leadership also has been cool to any talk of sentencing reform, such as reviewing the list of crimes that require 85 percent of the sentence be served before parole can be considered. That list has grown through the years, contributing greatly to prison crowding. But those "85 percent" laws are popular with everyday Oklahomans, and so why rock the boat?

On the other hand, the Department of Corrections is left to deal with the fallout. Like all state agencies, the DOC is working its way through budget cuts mandated by a state revenue shortfall. Furloughs for all DOC employees will begin in March, with about 450 layoffs possible in the next fiscal year. Meantime the prison system since July 1 has added enough inmates that it is operating at capacity.

One Board of Corrections member said lawmakers and state leaders seem disinterested in the DOC's plight. Another, Robert L. Rainey, said he was "surprised, shocked and dismayed" by the response to the agency. "The Legislature wants to incarcerate low-risk offenders and not pay for it," he said.

Auditors two years ago presented the Legislature with a way to alleviate prison crowding and save money. These rough economic times offer another chance to rethink the way Oklahoma deals with the high cost of corrections. Might change actually happen this time?