By C1 Staff
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is asking for an 18 percent budget increase in order to hire more staff and increase the salaries of its correctional officers.
KGOU reports that the agency hopes to return to levels of funding it saw six or seven years ago.
“Everybody has been critical of anybody going back to 2008, saying that that was just a really good year and there were a lot of agencies getting a lot of money,” said Director of Communications Terri Watkins. “But if you’ll see we’re even below the 2007 figures and just slightly above 2006.”
In fiscal year 2015, the DOC was given $470M; they are requesting around $555M for 2016.