Acknowledging Oklahoma City’s work on criminal justice reform

As the largest city in the area served by the Oklahoma County jail, it should come as no surprise that the Oklahoma City Police Department is the largest client of the county jail–or as Police Chief Bill Citty wryly observed at our recent Chamber Forum, they are the largest contributor to the problem of overcrowding.

For this reason, Chief Citty is a critical person to have at the table when discussing criminal justice reform, and luckily for us, his department has been having the conversation about who should be in the jail and why for more than 14 years now.

OCPD worked with the Oklahoma City Municipal Court and Presiding Judge Philippa C. James to stop putting people in jail because they couldn’t afford to pay a fine. Instead, the municipal court created additional hearings to more fairly deal with a person’s failure to pay. It’s a model that other cities have used successfully, and most cities don’t see an adverse effect on crime rates.

Without OCPD taking a look at why people were being arrested and placed in the Oklahoma County Jail and Judge James’ work to prevent our jail from turning into a debtors’ prison, it’s likely we wouldn’t have seen the jail’s occupancy drop to 1671 for non-Department of Corrections offenders in April. It wasn’t too long ago that the occupancy average was significantly higher. Chief Citty and Judge James are taking a stand to make sure the law is administered fairly in Oklahoma City, and their efforts are providing the momentum we need to keep reforms going.

This article originally appeared in the May 2018 issue of The POINT! Read the original.