About OCPA

Oklahoma puts 33% more men and 91% more women in prison than the national average. More than three-quarters of all those sent to prison are convicted of nonviolent crimes. Oklahoma’s prison system has been over capacity for years, and if we do not change course, state taxpayers will be on the hook to build three new prisons in the next decade. The status quo is financially unsustainable, and the human cost unjustifiable.

OCPA believes we can reduce incarceration while keeping crime rates low and even making our communities safer. The purpose of prison should be to lock up people who are dangerous and to punish people for the most serious crimes. Our criminal justice system should not push people into impossible-to-pay debts or compromise a person’s ability to work beyond what is truly necessary to protect the public.

Nearly everyone arrested, even most of those who go to prison, will one day return to our communities. The best result of the criminal justice system is turning offenders back into law-abiding and productive members of society. That is not always possible, but states that have decreased prison time and focused on better reentry and probation processes have seen both costs and crime rates go down.

Rather than being hard on crime, or soft on crime, it is time for Oklahoma to be smart on crime.