Sentencing Policies To Add Hundreds Of State Prisoners

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Sentencing policies, including guidelines that require some convicted felons to serve 85 percent of their sentences, will push Oklahoma's burgeoning inmate population up another

Thursday, July 26th 2007, 2:08 pm

By: News On 6

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) _ Sentencing policies, including guidelines that require some convicted felons to serve 85 percent of their sentences, will push Oklahoma's burgeoning inmate population up another 900 prisoners over the next year, the Oklahoma Sentencing Commission was told Thursday.

The inmate population, which stood at 25,160 on Monday, is expected to climb even higher over the next few years thanks to changes to state laws this year that created new criminal offenses or increased penalties for others, K.C. Moon, executive director of the Oklahoma Criminal Justice Resource Center, told commission members.

The commission's chairman, Sen. Richard Lerblance, D-Hartshorne, expressed alarm at the projections and said they are due to sentencing policies adopted by the Legislature that are forcing more inmates to serve longer sentences.

Those policies include emphasis on the so-called ``deadly sins,'' a list of 19 violent offenses that require those convicted of them to serve at least 85 percent of their sentence. The offenses include murder, rape and some forms of robbery, burglary, arson and child molestation.

The original list of 11 deadly sins was adopted by the Legislature in 1999. Lawmakers have added new crimes to the 85 percent requirement in subsequent years.

``The 85 percent rule is catching up now,'' Lerblance said. Because inmates must serve more of their sentences, fewer are leaving the state's prison system as more inmates are received.

Oklahoma is already the nation's top incarcerator of women, per capita, and fourth in the country in the number of men, per capita, in state prisons, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Lerblance also expressed concern that lawmakers are ignoring the commission's recommendations on sentencing reforms and ways to make the state's criminal justice system more efficient.

Lawmakers appropriated more than $477 million for state prisons for the fiscal year that began July 1, an increase of 4.7 percent from the previous year.

``This commission is making recommendations to the Legislature that is falling on deaf ears,'' Lerblance said. ``There's a lot of hard work that goes on in these meetings.''

Among the commission's recommendations this year was repeal of the mandatory life-without-parole sentence for defendants convicted of drug trafficking who have two prior drug offenses. Lerblance said a bill he filed to address that and other criminal justice issues was not given a hearing in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Rep. Sue Tibbs, R-Tulsa, has scheduled an interim study on sentencing reform that will be combined with a separate study by Rep. Mark McCullough, R-Sapulpa, on a model penal code. Moon said the combined study may also examine the sentencing of drug offenders.

The commission also recommended that the governor be removed from parole decisions. Oklahoma is the only state in the nation in which the governor must sign off on parole recommendations.

Lerblance said he filed legislation that would have scheduled an election for voters to decide whether to amend the state Constitution and remove the governor from the process, but it was not given a hearing. Tibbs is also conducting an interim study on the parole process.

Although lawmakers did not act on the recommendations, Moon said some criminal justice legislation was defeated this year apparently out of concern for the growing size and cost of the prison system.

Three bills, including two that would have added new categories to the list of deadly sins for which defendants must serve 85 percent of their sentences, would have driven up prison costs by almost $90 million over five years.