For your information …                      September 27, 2003

Here we go again … The new Department of Corrections proposed budget includes a fiscal year 2005 request of $421.1 million, a 13% increase over the fiscal year 2004 request of $373.9.  The department is expecting growth of 600 inmates in the system's population during fiscal 2005.

By BARBARA HOBEROCK World Capitol Bureau, 9/27/2003, View in Print (PDF) Format

OKLAHOMA CITY -- The Board of Corrections indicated Friday that it would ask state lawmakers for slightly more than $47 million in new money for fiscal year 2005.

The new funds would be used to pay for private prisons and rented jail space and to hire more correctional and probation and parole officers, said Jerry Massie, a spokesman for the state Corrections Department.

At a meeting at the Oklahoma State Reformatory in Granite, the board approved a 2005 budget request of slightly more than $421 million. Last year's appropriation was nearly $374 million.

For fiscal year 2004, the agency asked for $446.5 million but received $373.9 million, according to Shawn Ashley, a spokesman for the Office of State Finance.

The Corrections Department has a deficit in its 2004 funds and anticipates asking lawmakers for a supplemental appropriation, Massie said.  "We don't have enough to make it through the year," he said.

Senate President Pro Tem Cal Hobson, D-Lexington, said he hopes that a supplemental appropriation won't be needed.

"But as you know, corrections and supplemental almost always are used in the same sentence," Hobson said.

"We have a $200 million budget hole to address first because the current budget, the 2004 budget, was built on a number of one-time funds only," he said. "So first things first -- finding $200 million. Then we get around to talking about various agencies' hopes and dreams."

The Corrections Department hopes to increase the number of correctional officers and probation and parole officers. It is seeking $7.8 million to bring its vacancy rate to 10 percent from 17 percent. The agency is authorized to have 2,886 correctional officers and probation and parole offices, Massie said.

"The increase will allow the department to address the continued decline in security positions, while having to handle larger numbers of institutional inmates being housed in state facilities," according to the 2005 budget request.

An additional $3.8 million would be used to fund an increase in the dependent benefit allowance.

The agency also is seeking nearly $36 million in new money to pay for contract beds and fund an increase in inmates.

Bo Don Cox works at the typewriter after his release from prison June 12. Cox served almost 18 years of a life     sentence and has shared his faith with thousands of Episcopalians through Forward Movement Publication's Forward Day by Day manual of daily Bible readings and devotions. 
Transcript Photo by Kevin Ellis

Transcript Staff Writer

"I started out writing monthly meditations for the Forward Move­ment Publication's 'Forward Day by Day,' (an Episcopalian manual of daily Bible readings and devotions), and it took off from there," said Cox, 39, who was released June 12.  "I've written collections of daily medita­tions in 1995, 1998, 2000 and 2001, and my book, 'God Is Not In the Thesaurus,' was published by Forward Movement Publications in 1999."

Lawmakers looking to cut prison population, costs (3/10/03) 

By Tim Talley Associated Press Writer

Oklahoma CITY- From resurrecting the prison cap law to making marijuana possession punishable by the equivalent of a traffic ticket, Oklahoma law­makers are looking for ways to cut the state's prison population and its skyrocketing costs.

Faced with a $677 million bud­get shortfall next year, the 2003 Legislature is considering sen­tencing reforms and other pro­posals to reduce the state’s incar­ceration rate, one of the nation's highest, without jeopardizing public safety.

"It's trying to balance the need to reduce our corrections costs, which have just exploded over the last two decades," said James Drummond, a member of the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission and chief of the non-capital trial division of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System.

The state Senate is consider­ing a plan to resurrect the prison cap law. It would allow the early release of eligible, nonviolent inmates when prisons become too crowded, provided they have 60 days or fewer to serve on their sentences.

The cap law was repealed in 2001, five years after an inmate released under the law shot and killed his ex-girlfriend and her parents and wounded his 21/2-year-old before he was killed by police.

Last week, the Sentencing Commission handed down a list of proposed sentencing reforms, including elimination of manda­tory minimum sentences for cer­tain drug offenses and allowing more offenders to receive sus­pended sentences and partici­pate in community sentencing programs.

The commission said the number of felony offenders pro­jected for state prisons in the next few years will outstrip the number of prison beds the Department of Corrections can afford.

Recommendations include making possession of one ounce or less of marijuana a misde­meanor subject to a citation not unlike a traffic ticket. Offenders could still receive some jail time and be ordered to participate in mandatory treatment programs.

Statistics compiled by the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center found that drug and alcohol offenses are the lead­ing causes of prison sentences in the state, accounting for 44 per­cent of all receptions in 2001.

The center found marijuana possession accounted for 12 per­cent of all felony drug posses­sors convicted in 2001.

Another recommendation would give judges, not prosecu­tors, the authority to decide who is eligible for community sentencing programs. The commission turned down a similar proposal to make judges the gatekeepers for defendants assigned to drug courts.

A constitutional amendment would be required to authorize another of the commission’s proposals; not requiring, the governor’s approval for parole release unless the district attorney or victim has protested the inmate’s parole with the Pardon and parole Board.

A study released last month by the Oklahoma Alliance for Public Policy Research said Oklahoma's incarceration rate is 56 percent higher than the national average.

Reducing Oklahoma’s incarceration rate to the national aver­age would purge state prisons of more than 8,000 inmates at a sav­ings of more than $138 million a year, the study found.

Prison spending in Oklahoma has doubled to almost $400 mil­lion in the past 10 years, and the inmate population has grown from 14,400 to more than 23,000.

The state ranks fourth in the nation behind Louisiana, Missis­sippi and Texas in the number of people_ it sends to prison per capita.

The state Board of Correc­tions has resurrected a plan to place the state's more than 4,800 corrections workers on unpaid furlough to help offset a cut in the agency's budget due to the revenue shortfall