Counterpoint: New Oklahoma County jail won't repair systemic failures
On Tuesday, June 28, Oklahoma County voters will decide where our priorities lie when we vote on the bond resolution question that would provide $260 million to the county to partially fund a new, bigger jail. This proposal is an improper solution to the wrong problem. We have had a humanitarian crisis in Oklahoma County jail for decades with perpetual overcrowding facilitating poor conditions. A new, bigger jail does not solve this problem. Jails are almost always filled to the brim, no matter the size. Building a bigger jail to address overcrowding will not solve this reality. The appropriate response to overcrowding is decarceration.
Another take: Roy Williams: Be part of the solution. Vote 'yes' to build new jail.
It is the common sense and cost-effective solution to the problem of overcrowding and the horrid conditions within the jail. Up to 80% of people incarcerated in Oklahoma County at any given time are there pretrial because they cannot afford to pay their bail. This means thousands of people are locked up before ever having their day in court simply because they are too poor to pay an arbitrary bond amount. Oklahoma has long been at the top of the list of incarceration rates. Our response to this crisis that our jail exacerbates should not be to build a bigger jail but to incarcerate fewer people.
This jail bond, if passed, would mean Oklahoma voters gave a blank check to the jail trust, which would still oversee the new, bigger jail. The estimated full cost of the new jail is $300 million. Where the additional $40 million will come from is unknown. How long it will take to build the jail is unknown, though the bond is stated to last for up to 30 years. Where the new, bigger jail will be built is unknown. $260 million , with interest, is too large of an investment to have so many lingering unknowns.
The most important reason to vote no on this bond is that a new, bigger jail will not solve the problems we have in Oklahoma County. Dr. Angela Y. Davis tells us that jails and prisons “do not disappear social problems, they disappear human beings.” Based on data presented to Oklahoma County Detention Center Action Committee members in 2021, the most cited offenses of people incarcerated in Oklahoma County are related to drug use, homelessness and survival economies like stealing.
Despite the best attempts of commissioners and the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber to paint this new jail as a humanitarian response to our current jail, a jail will always be a jail. A jail’s purpose is to punish an individual for a purported wrongdoing, ideally so that they will not do it again. But punishment does not work to prevent many things labeled as crimes because so much of what is criminalized occurs out of trauma responses and a person’s need to survive. Our response to trauma should be decriminalization, rehabilitation and other services removed from jails and prisons.
The reasons people steal may not be because they are evil people who get a rush out of doing wrong. People sometimes steal because they need food or money. People are not homeless because of some moral failing; they are homeless because our systems have failed them. Our response to systemic failures should not be punishment but should be abundantly funding resources like affordable housing, mental health care, transportation, nourishing food access and education. This is where our investments should be going.
Oklahoma County voters have a chance to say we want care, human dignity, resources and services rather than the incarceration of our neighbors. I encourage all to vote No on Tuesday, June 28, and to work with the communities that have been disproportionately impacted by Oklahoma County’s criminal legal system to lift up the real solutions to the urgent problems we face.
aurelius francisco is a community organizer, writer and educator from Oklahoma City and is co-executive director of the Foundation for Liberating Minds.
This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Opinion: New Oklahoma County jail won't repair systemic failures
