Time for Oklahoma to modernize sentencing laws

Oklahoma lawmakers are considering legislation this year that would be a significant step forward in criminal justice reform. HB 1792 is the result of several years of work by the Criminal Justice Reclassification Coordination Council, which the legislature created in 2018 to propose a new system that organizes the 1,100 felonies in Oklahoma’s criminal code into standard offense classes, with tiered sentence lengths and enhancements based on the severity of the crime committed.

Timothy Tardibono, executive director of the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council, is a member of the Council. “This legislation is an important step in modernizing Oklahoma’s criminal code, bringing badly needed consistency and clarity to a confusing and outdated system,” he said. He went on to explain that Oklahoma, unlike most other states and our surrounding neighbors, does not currently organize its criminal code into a standard classification system, but instead relies on a patchwork of laws with its own variation in sentence length and fines, many of which are out of step with national averages for comparable offenses.

“The result is that people charged with the same crimes in different counties often face radically different sentences,” he continued. “These disproportionate punishments, particularly in non-violent cases, are a big contributor to our high rate of imprisonment. Fixing this problem will bring fairness and clarity to the system.”

The new system will organize the 1,100 felonies in Oklahoma’s criminal code into standard offense classes, with tiered sentence lengths and enhancements based on the severity of the crime committed. It will foster greater consistency in felony sentencing while still maintaining discretion for prosecutors, judges and juries, and at the same time reduce the prison population and corrections spending.

“Oklahoma has made real progress in reducing our jail and prison populations,” Tardibono continued. “We are moving offenders to diversion programs and addressing their underlying issues of substance use, addiction and mental illness. We are reducing incarceration, and we are also reducing crime rates and recidivism.”

“There are also real benefits to the taxpayer. Right now, the median time served for people in prison in Oklahoma is a full year longer than the national average. Nonviolent offenders spend twice as long, on average, as offenders across the nation. With this reclassification, we have seen estimates that the state will save more than $100 million – without decreasing public safety,” he concluded.

The legislation has passed the House and is being considered this week by the full Senate.