State Corrections Director Joe Allbaugh is taking his department’s latest crisis efforts to control its population personally.
Through its actions and inactions, the Oklahoma Legislature has put Allbaugh and the state prison system in a desperate situation: Too many inmates and too little money to deal with them. The state doesn’t have the space or guards to deal properly with the nearly 27,000 prisoners behind bars, and the state’s retributive sentencing laws keeps cramming more inmates through the front door.
To ease the situation, the state has unveiled a new community supervision program. Some offenders who are within 18 months of release will get out early if they meet the program’s standards. They can’t have been convicted of a violent crime, a drug trafficking offense, a sex offense or a felony or misdemeanor domestic violence offense. No prisoners with an active protective order on their records are eligible. The prisoners will have jobs and a place to live.
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State Rep. Scott Biggs, R-Chickasha, immediately demagogued on the plan. (You’ll remember Biggs as the man who blocked Gov. Mary Fallin’s prison reform program in the Legislature last year.) When he saw the early release program, he shot out a press release claiming it would mean nearly 1,500 felons, including people convicted of attacking police officers, stalking and acting as accessories to murder would be endangering the public again.
Not true.
Biggs’ boogeyman press release relied on only a portion of the screening the corrections department will use to weed out inmates who pose a significant risk to the public, Allbaugh said. The actual number released will be closer to a quarter of what Biggs suggested.
The fail-safe for determining whether an inmate is eligible for release or not is Allbaugh himself.
The corrections director told The Oklahoman that he is taking a personal role in the final determination of who gets released, and “kind of be judge, jury and executioner.”
We admire Allbaugh. In his time at DOC, he’s proven himself to be creative and dedicated. He’s not afraid to tell the truth to power, and he takes his responsibility to protect the public seriously.
It’s too bad that members of the Legislature, especially Biggs, don’t take their responsibilities as seriously; but, of course, that’s how we got in this fix in the first place.
