OKPOLICY.ORG
First Lady Sarah Stitt, who is serving as Senior Policy Advisor on the Women’s Justice Commission, joined other state leaders for the Commission’s conference in Tulsa last week. The Commission, chaired by former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch, is part of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan organization that seeks to advance understanding of the criminal justice policy choices facing the nation and to build consensus for solutions that enhance safety and justice for all.
It is encouraging to see Mrs. Stitt, who as she put it had a tumultuous childhood because of her mother’s mental health and addiction issues, take a leading role in working for solutions for women who become entangled in the criminal legal system. Her own childhood experiences give her insight into the negative consequences of incarceration on both mothers and their children.
Her aim is not for these women to avoid accountability, but to help develop policies that recognize the trauma nearly all of them have suffered and to find solutions beyond just lengthy incarceration. She points out that Oklahoma regularly leads the nation in both its rate of female incarceration and for the most domestic violence homicides per capita.
Gov. Stitt has shown in the past his desire to deal with Oklahoma’s overreliance on incarceration in our criminal legal system. After the people passed State Question 780 in 2016, reducing simple drug possession and lower-level property offenses from felonies to misdemeanors, he signed House Bill 1269 in 2019 giving retroactive effect to the provisions of SQ 780. Then he implemented the new law by paroling over 500 people serving felony sentences for offenses that are now misdemeanors.
The governor also established the MODERN Justice Task Force in 2023. The task force concentrated its efforts on making findings and recommendations dealing with mental health issues and with lengthy and unnecessary pretrial incarceration and delays in getting cases to trial.
Hopefully, the governor and Mrs. Stitt, with their active advocacy, can make progress during this legislative session on these issues they care about with several bills that have been filed. Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, filed Senate Bill 594 that aligns Oklahoma’s “failure to protect” laws more closely with other states. Often women get sentenced to lengthy prison time, sometimes more than the perpetrator, for “failing to protect” their children from actions committed by someone else.
The women may be victims of violence and threats themselves, but in Oklahoma they are subject to the same penalties as to the abuser. The first lady’s understanding of the complexities of these relationships can be persuasive.
Rep. Rande Worthen, R-Lawton, and Sen. Todd Gollihare, R-Kellyville, have filed HB 1706 and SB 967 respectively that will provide a procedure for pretrial incarceration to be based on a judge’s determination of whether a person must be incarcerated prior to trial to protect the public or assure their appearance in court and set some deadlines based on some of the findings of the governor’s MODERN Justice Task Force.
