DRUGS AT CORE OF PRISON DEBATE

The pressure is on for changes in how Oklahoma deals with law
offenders as the state budget crisis deepens and a costly prison
population grows. On one side are policymakers who think the state has
erred badly in sending so many drug and alcohol offenders to prison.
On the other are prosecutors who call drugs the root of more serious
crimes.

Gov. Frank Keating, who is winding up eight years in office, last week
asked the Pardon and Parole Board to consider up to 1,000 commutations
of first-time nonviolent offenders.

It's not a case of Keating softening his stand against crime, but
recognition that many of the inmates "should not have been in the
corrections system in the first place," Keating spokesman Dan Mahoney
said.

Mahoney said many of the 1,000 inmates being considered for
commutations are in prison for simple drug possession and should have
gone into the community corrections system.

Oklahoma ranks No. 4 in the country behind Louisiana, Mississippi and
Texas in the number of people it sends to prison per capita.

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

During the same period, the state's crime rate fell
significantly.

"The reason is, we have been locking up people for things we don't
measure," such as drug and alcohol offenses, said state Sen. Dick
Wilkerson, D-Atwood, a former Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
official.

He said crime statistics are based on crimes that exist even if no one
is arrested, such as murder and theft, as opposed to some drug cases,
when a crime becomes evident only upon an arrest.

Wilkerson, chairman of the Senate appropriations subcommittee on
public safety and the judiciary, blames the rising prison population
on a political system that allows district attorneys, not judges, to
determine who goes to prison and for how long.

He said progressive ideas such as drug courts and community sentencing
were enacted only after lawmakers agreed to make prosecutors the
gatekeepers of the programs.

"They have intimidated us in the Legislature, and because they have a
good lobby, the laws are written where the DA's have, in effect,
become the entity that determines the sentences," Wilkerson said.

Other reasons for the high prison population is that Oklahoma has not
revamped its criminal code and treats felonies too similarly for
sentencing purposes, the senator said.

"Someone who writes a $50 check is not the same as someone who kills,
rapes or breaks into your home," he said.

He said prisons should exist for one reason -- "warehousing predators"
for the protection of society.

Wilkerson says more than 80 percent of state inmates do not fall into
the "predator" class but are in prison for drug and alcohol crimes
that should be dealt with in drug court and community corrections
facilities, where there is supervision and chances are great for
rehabilitation.

Mark Gibson, president of the Oklahoma District Attorneys Association,
said statistics don't tell the whole truth. He said some of those
listed as first-time offenders had multiple offenses that were not
prosecuted or they were wanted in other jurisdictions for more serious
crimes.

The real debate, Gibson said, is between those who believe laws should
be enforced and those "who absolutely believe that drug offenders
should not go to prison."

Wilkerson says Oklahoma's get-tough-on-crime stance has had unintended
consequences.

A life-without-parole law passed in the 1980s will soon lead to the
establishment of prison nursing homes for elderly inmates with serious
health problems, he said. Oklahoma taxpayers will have to pay for their care.

Wilkerson said society is not dealing with young people who get into
trouble as well as it did in the past.

He said 99 percent of those who joined the Marine Corps with him in
1962 to escape a jail term straightened out their lives.

He credits the gunner sergeant for "standing over them and telling
them their actions had consequences."