Here are excerpts from recent editorials in Oklahoma newspapers:
Stillwater News Press. Feb. 11, 2018.
In the newspaper business, we worry about a day when no one will feel the need to be informed. It’s a scary thought. But what about a day when no one will heed the call to govern?
Take, for example, a Perkins City Commissioner filing period that came and went without a single person filing for one of two open ward seats. Two terms are set to expire in April. Two people could have run opposed. No one stepped up. That’s rough.
Now, Perkins will either have to appoint the two open positions from the remaining City Councilors or pay for a special election. The former idea would probably make more sense because you wouldn’t want to risk having no one file a second time.
We’re not picking on Perkins. Fortunately, Stillwater has two entrants in the council race, but in the past two cycles, two ran unopposed and another was all but unopposed after the opponent filed, but chose not to campaign.
Is it just that no one wants to take on a job that many would deem thankless? It requires a lot of effort to govern if you’re doing it right, but it is definitely a task worth doing.
Kansas has six teenagers running for governor. There is a lesson in there somewhere. One would be about closing election loopholes, but another has to be that we kind find inspiration in all kinds of places.
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Tulsa World. Feb. 13, 2018.
Oklahoma has enough overcrowded and stressed prisons and jails without adding people whose most serious offense is poverty.
A civil rights lawsuit filed Nov. 2 in U.S. Northern District Court argues the state’s method of collecting unpaid court fines and costs is unconstitutional. It is seeking class-action status.
The complaint alleges Oklahoma Sheriffs Association and Aberdeen Enterprizes II Inc. are part of an extortion scheme against indigent Oklahomans.
Sheriffs in many counties, including Tulsa and Rogers, are also named in the suit.
Joining the legal team are the Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection, which is part of the Georgetown University Law Center, and the nonprofit Civil Rights Corps.
We won’t make any judgments on the law or most of the facts in the case. The proper place to decide those issues is the courtroom.
But we will say this: Oklahoma has too many people in jail for owing money on fines that are out of proportion to the underlying violations. Those fines have historically been set not because they represent the proper penalty for the crime, but because the Legislature was looking for revenue without raising taxes.
As we see it, jails have two purposes: Holding people who have been convicted of crimes and holding people charged with crimes and who would be a danger to society if released or who would flee the jurisdiction to avoid justice.
They are not for coercing people who don’t have money to fork it over - or they shouldn’t be.
Oklahoma has a higher portion of its women in prison than any other state, and we’re well on our way to leading the nation in all forms of incarceration. That penchant for locking up too many people for the wrong reasons isn’t just seen in the prison system, and the costs of unneeded incarceration - in prisons and jails - is astronomical.
The pending litigation is one reason the state should re-examine how many people it holds behind bars, but bringing justice to the community and the taxpayers is an even stronger one.
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The Oklahoman. Feb. 13, 2018.
The continuing move to change the way Oklahoma County approaches criminal justice is exemplified in the work of District Judge Cindy Truong, who makes it a point to bring her courtroom to the county jail on weekends.
The Oklahoman’s Josh Dulaney wrote recently about Truong’s Saturday and Sunday visits to the jail, where for the past three months she has issued roughly 15 releases per weekend for men and women being held on nonviolent charges.
This isn’t opening the floodgates - it’s a smart way to slightly reduce the number of offenders being held at the jail, which for years has struggled with overcrowding. The high-rise jail was built to hold 1,200 inmates, but often has held double that number.
That isn’t the case anymore, as the county has looked for ways to drive down the inmate count. Sheriff P.D. Taylor implemented several changes last year, such as administering Breathalyzer tests before processing a person arrested for DUI. If the test doesn’t support the arrest, then the person is released instead of being booked into the jail. Changes by city police have helped, too, with the number of people sent to the jail on municipal charges falling by one-quarter in the past two years.
There also has been a more concerted effort to release some low-risk inmates on own-recognizance (OR) or conditional bonds. Because of these changes and others, the jail’s average daily population in January was 1,769. That makes for a safer building for those being held, and for sheriff’s deputies assigned to monitor them.
Truong’s work is in this vein. She says she looks for cases involving low-level offenses such as writing bogus checks, property crimes or individuals who might benefit from a diversion program.
“Just because they’re eligible doesn’t mean I approve them,” she told Dulaney. “. We want to protect the public, but at the same time, we want to get people into treatment and get jobs and be productive citizens.”
In 2016, researchers with the Vera Institute of Justice said about 80 percent of those coming into the jail were “pretrial” - not serving time for an offense or having been found guilty of one. One-fourth of all jail admissions were for the lowest-level offenses, Vera found.
Even a brief stay in jail can cost a person his job; reducing the likelihood of that happening is wise.
Not everyone is a fan of these changes. A board member with the Oklahoma Bondsman Association says overuse of OR bonds “could have a disastrous effect on the judicial system, negative ramifications on victims of crime and, ultimately, increased costs to taxpayers.”
Such objections are to be expected from the industry, but they ring hollow - as do its claims that more than 40 percent of those granted OR bonds don’t return to court as scheduled.
Truong and others are to be commended for employing new, responsible methods of dealing with criminal justice in Oklahoma County.
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