Commissioner: New jail to be 'night and day' improvement from current jail's problems
Editor's Note: After a review, The Oklahoman has determined it did not make a robust enough effort to interview Oklahoma County Commissioner Brian Maughan for our May 14 story on the rise of deaths at the county jail. The commissioner says he was willing to be interviewed. We apologize for this lapse. In this story we asked him the questions we would have asked for that story.
Brian Maughan, District 2 commissioner for Oklahoma County, had a message Monday for those seeking answers to the mounting deaths at the Oklahoma County jail.
“In short order, we’re going to be able to break ground on a new facility and things will be night and day different whenever we’re in the new facility, and I'm just asking for their patience between now and then as we’re all hanging tight, trying to get there,” Maughan said from his office in downtown Oklahoma City.
An investigation by The Oklahoman, published Sunday, revealed that inmates die in the Oklahoma County jail, which currently holds an average of nearly 1,600 inmates a day, at a rate four and five times greater than inmates at some of the nation’s largest, and most troubled jail systems.
Broken Trust: How the Oklahoma County jail leadership failed those it sought to protect
The number of deaths remained relatively steady from 2018 through 2020, when it had a rate of 4.09 deaths per 1,000 inmates. That rate soared in 2021, its first full year under the leadership of the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority, known as the jail trust, to 10.13, and remained at 9.12 in 2022.
The COVID-19 pandemic accounted for some of that surge, but no other jail in the more than dozen large jails The Oklahoman examined experienced as significant a rise.
A combined total of 43 inmate deaths — including homicides, suicides and fatal drug overdoses — since the trust took over facility management from the sheriff’s office nearly three years ago.
District 1 Commissioner Carrie Blumert said Monday she hoped The Oklahoman's investigation would "do what is intended to do, which is to put pressure on elected officials, appointed trustees and (Jail Administrator) Brandi Garner" to take the critical steps needed to reduce deaths at the jail.
From the day it opened in 1991, the jail has been fraught with problems, from crumbling infrastructure to overcrowding.
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New jail aims to reduce deaths, solve infrastructure problems at current facility
Maughan said Monday that much has been done to fix infrastructure, and there are fewer inmates daily booked into the jail, but a new facility is the key to alleviating many of the Oklahoma County jail’s problems.
Voters last June approved a $260 million bond package to fund a new jail facility, which supporters believe is the long-needed solution in Oklahoma County.
Maughan estimates the new jail — which won’t have the high-rise design that causes logistical problems at the current location — to open in three to five years.
But he also wants enough land in the jail’s new location to create a criminal justice complex with a courtroom, offices and spaces for lawyers and bail bondsmen to lease out.
Such a complex would help get inmates through the local criminal justice system more quickly, he said.
“It would ultimately be to keep everybody as expeditiously as possible processed through, not changing the outcome of the justice that’s going to be rendered,” he said.
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Jail trust should not be dissolved, commissioner says
Maughan also spoke forcefully about not dissolving the jail trust and reverting control of the jail back to the sheriff’s office.
“We don’t want to go backwards,” he said. “I don’t care if it was my own mother that was in charge of the jail, that’s too much responsibility, in my opinion, vested in one person.”
The nine-member trust provides checks and balances, and more transparency, he said.
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However, in March, a multicounty grand jury slammed the trust in a 15-page report and called for it to cease to exist.
The grand jury recommended that the jail be turned back over to the sheriff.
Maughan said he was subpoenaed for the grand jury’s investigation, but never got to testify.
“I also point out that the grand jury did not find anything indictable and they did an exhaustive search,” Maughan said. “It cost the jail trust around a million dollars to defend itself through that, and that’s $1 million less we’ll have for this fiscal budget only to find out that there was nothing that the grand jury found to issue an indictment over.”
Maughan said he understands the temptation for the public to place blame on anyone who oversees the jail, whether it be a trust or a sheriff.
But he repeatedly asked for the public’s patience in fixing what has been, for decades, a county embarrassment.
“Things are better and we’re going to continue to make things better to the extent we can in that facility, and help is on the way, thanks to the voters approving a new jail,” he said.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: New Oklahoma County jail building can alleviate systemic issues, leaders say
