Though the Legislature has again failed to fund the treatments that SQ 781 statutorily required, we know that justice reform has measurably reduced the prison population and that mental health remains severely underfunded.
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Criminal justice reform was a lower profile priority in Oklahoma’s 2021 legislative session compared to previous years. Despite this fact, several significant reforms aimed at increasing economic opportunity for justice-involved families were signed into law.
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Our analysis suggests that rural Oklahomans are asked to pay just as much, and often more, than their urban counterparts. More worrisome still, urban areas like Tulsa and Oklahoma counties have the most difficulty in collecting fines and fees, meaning rural Oklahomans are effectively contributing more of their money to fund the court system as compared to their urban counterparts.
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By:
Steve Lewis
March 15, 2021 // Updated: March 15, 2021
Sen. Julie Daniels, R-Bartlesville, has spent considerable time working to make the collection of court fines and fees both more efficient and less destructive to the lives of people who are legitimately unable to pay. She held an interim study…
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Each year, thousands of Oklahomans face driver’s license suspension for failure to pay court fines and fees. As OK Policy has reported previously, tens of thousands of failure to pay arrest warrants are issued each year to the poorest Oklahomans.
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Though much remains to be done, the Oklahoma Policy Institute has been tracking the effects of justice reform in courts, jails, and prisons as reforms have taken hold and found a steady move towards a less punitive approach to offenses like drug possession and burglary.
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By:
Damion Shade
December 9, 2020 // Updated: December 10, 2020
While much of this conversation has been focused on municipal budgets and inadequate funding for mental health and social services, it’s also critical that lawmakers consider how the system of court fines and fees contributes to racial disparities in both policing and incarceration.
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OK Policy is now hiring for a Justice Data Analyst. The Justice Data Analyst will use Open Justice Oklahoma’s (OJO) database of court, prison, and jail records to open the black box of our justice system.
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By:
Ashley Harvey
November 17, 2020 // Updated: November 17, 2020
Although Oklahoma courts suspended most of their activities back in March, they have continued to collect fines and fees. So far this year, about $33.7 million in court debt has been collected from felony and misdemeanor cases alone, compared to about $40 million collected by this time last year.
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Data show that eviction filings and orders have accelerated in Oklahoma even after the CDC moratorium took effect on Sept. 4, and Oklahomans remain at risk for eviction through the end of the year.
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