The Oklahoman
OKLAHOMA CITY — STATE Rep. Bobby Cleveland has made corrections a priority during his first term in the Oklahoma House, visiting prisons regularly to talk to officers and inmates alike. His assessment? “We’ve got to start doing things differently than we’re doing.”
Cleveland, R-Slaughterville, offered a bill this session that would have done that in one small way. It involved inmates sentenced to crimes that require they serve 85 percent of their time before being considered for parole. Cleveland’s bill, requested by correctional officers, would have allowed these inmates to begin earning good-behavior credits once they enter prison.
No inmates would have been released before serving the 85 percent. Instead the change would have allowed inmates to eventually be released a few months earlier than scheduled, which would have freed up beds and saved the system money — roughly $5 million per year.
Cleveland says he felt good about the prospects of passage when the bill came to the floor in March. That optimism faded quickly after a fellow GOP freshman said several times during debate that the bill was “soft on crime.” That was all it took. In no time, the bill was voted down by a wide margin.
No wonder Sean Wallace is frustrated. Wallace is executive director of Oklahoma Corrections Professionals, which represents the men and women charged with keeping prisoners in line. Cleveland’s bill would not have cost the state a penny. It had the potential to make prisons safer for the staff because, presently, these “85 percenters” have no incentive to behave. Yet the bill got waylaid by political concerns.
“In case you’ve lost track, the situation in Oklahoma prisons is not improving,” Wallace wrote recently in the Tulsa World. Examples follow:
•A female case manager was assaulted in her office. Another was taken hostage for a time with a knife to her throat.
•A national report showed the all-female prison at McLoud has the nation’s highest rate of reported sexual assaults.
•A nationwide survey found Oklahoma’s officer-to-inmate ratio to be the worst in the country.
•New Department of Corrections Director Robert Patton’s efforts to remove state inmates from county jails has led to inmates being housed “in conference rooms, visiting areas, gymnasiums, wherever they can fit. Support staff are now working security posts.”
All of which makes the Republican-controlled Legislature’s refusal to consider any reform efforts all the more distressing. No one is proposing wholesale changes that would result in really bad guys getting out earlier than they should. Instead, small changes have been proposed. And rejected.
An example is a bill by Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, that was carried over from last year after being approved by the House. It would have allowed roughly 800 prisoners who are 65 and older to request a parole hearing. The bill applied to inmates serving time for nonviolent offenses who had served at least 10 years or one-third of their sentence. No 85 percenters or sex offenders would have been eligible. The Senate defeated the bill 29-14, with 28 of the nay votes cast by Republicans.
Wallace noted that in other states, conservative lawmakers, — even in election years — have signed off on sensible efforts to reduce their prison populations. He’s on point in saying this: “It takes a lot of courage for a DOC employee just to go to work every day. Our elected leaders should have the courage to address these life and death issues despite their upcoming elections.”