Fascinating Oklahoma initiative seeking to block non-violent prior convictions from enhancing statutory range of punishment qualifies for ballot
The COVID pandemic has derailed various ballot initiatives in various jurisdictions, but I am very pleased to see this news about the success of one criminal justice reform effort in at least making it to the ballot in Oklahoma. Here are the details and some background:
The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that enough voter signatures were collected to put a question regarding sentence enhancements for nonviolent offenders on the ballot on November 3.
More than 248,000 Oklahomans signed an initiative petition to get State Question 805 on the ballot.
Sentence enhancements allow courts to widen the range of years they can sentence a person to prison if that person has been convicted of another felony in the past. The state question will ask voters to take that power away from courts when they’re sentencing people who have never been convicted of a violent felony.
A recent analysis from the Oklahoma Council for Public Affairs suggests ending enhancements for nonviolent offenders could cut the state’s prison population more than eight percent in 10 years and save the state up to $186 million.
The Oklahoma Department of Corrections questions some of the study’s findings.
A 2017 report from a task force established by former Governor Mary Fallin found that sentence enhancements were a large contributor to Oklahoma’s disproportionately high prison population.
Because I am not an expert on Oklahoma's current politics around sentencing reforms, I do not have a keen sense of whether this initiative has a real chance of passage. But I do sense this initiative could and should engender an important national conversation about often out-sized impact of (even minor) criminal history at sentencing. And in light of this OCPA report stressing the fiscal savings of this reform, it will be quite interesting to see how debates over public safety and state spending play out in a very red state circa fall 2020. The OCPA report has this summary and concluding thoughts providing its accounting of what State Question 805 might achieve:
Oklahoma criminal statutes typically provide a sentencing range for each offense. A separate law allows even longer sentences—sometimes including life in prison—for persons with prior felony convictions. People convicted of non-violent property and drug offenses are the most likely to receive enhanced penalties under this law and also receive the harshest sentence increases.
State Question 805 would limit this sentence enhancement to crimes that the legislature considers violent. This should reduce Oklahoma’s prison population by 8.5% over the next 10 years. That would reduce state expenses between $45 million and $186 million, with expected savings of at least $142 million. Taxpayer savings of up to $27 million per year would continue indefinitely into the future. These funds could be directed to substance abuse and mental health services, victim’s services, reentry programs, or other public safety priorities....
With all of these changes, however, SQ 805 would still only reduce Oklahoma to the fourth-most incarcerated state in the nation. Rather than the radical reductions opponents claim, this is a common-sense, limited adjustment to drug and property sentence lengths that will make Oklahoma’s failing criminal justice system more efficient and more fair.
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