OKLAHOMA STILL NOT SMART ENOUGH ON CRIME

OKLAHOMA CITY -- 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 policy-makers 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 tough stand against crime, but
recognition that many of the inmates "should not have been in the
corrections system in the first place," said Keating spokesman Dan Mahoney.

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 currently 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, in large
measure, on a political system that allows district attorneys, and not
judges, to determine who goes to prison and for how long.

He said progressive ideas like drug courts and community sentencing were
enacted into law 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 veteran senator said.

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

In his mind, 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."

One thing every sheriff or police chief knows is that in dealing with all
types of crime, "a huge majority comes from drug offenders," Gibson said.
Putting drug offenders in prison "reduces our other crime problems at the
same time," he said.

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 the high cost
of their care.

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

He said he remembers that many of those who went into the Marine Corps with
him in 1962 had run afoul of the law and joined the service to escape a
jail term.

"Ninety-nine percent of them straightened out their lives and made good
Marines," many losing their lives in Vietnam, he said. "And it was not boot
camp that cured them. It was four years of aftercare.

"It was a gunner sergeant standing over them and telling them that their
actions have consequences and they are part of something bigger than they are."