Why Are So Many Oklahoma Women in Jail?

Oklahoma means "Land of the Red Man."

Perhaps the government of Oklahoma needs to return it,  need to give it back because they don't seem to be doing so well for their women.



Oklahoma Imprisons Women at the Highest Rate in the United States

Robyn Allen saw her daughter for the first time in two years from across the yard of Oklahoma’s largest women’s prison, the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center.

Because the two were serving time for the same 2013 methamphetamine case, they weren’t supposed to communicate. As Allen’s daughter, Cherise Greer, was being loaded into a van on her way to another prison, the guard turned away and let Cherise say a few words.

“She told me she loved me and said, ‘Mom, please don’t cry,’ ” said Allen, 52, wiping away tears as she recalled the moment.

Robyn Allen, 52, is serving time at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in central Oklahoma for trafficking of methamphetamine. Though this was her first felony offense, she was sentenced to 20 years. 

When their paths crossed in June, Allen and her daughter were among more than 3,000 women serving time in Oklahoma, which has led the nation in locking up women for the past 25 years. The state imprisons 151 out of every 100,000 women – more than double the national rate.

In partnership with Oklahoma journalism startup The Frontier, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting spent more than a year unearthing the causes. The reporting included obtaining a decade’s worth of state prison data never before analyzed by the state itself.

THE DATA

The most common reason women end up in prison is drug possession. Oklahoma dealt out ever-longer sentences for these women, even as other conservative states reduced drug sentences as part of criminal justice system overhauls.

In Tulsa County, analysis shows that women’s sentences for drug crimes decreased over the past seven years. That’s where an intensive program funded by oil billionaire George Kaiser’s foundation works to provide alternatives to prison for women facing long sentences for drug offenses and other crimes.

The burden of the state’s high incarceration rate falls hardest on women of color. Black women are incarcerated at about twice the rate of their representation in the state’s adult population. For Native American women, the disparity is almost three times their share of the population.

Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin has called the state’s No. 1 ranking for its female incarceration rate “a dubious honor … not something I’m proud of.” (Why is she calling it an "honor" at all?) The Republican recently pushed state lawmakers to approve new justice reform laws with mixed results.

State voters got tired of waiting for lawmakers to act and passed reforms, making possession of drugs for personal use, a misdemeanor.

It’s unclear how deeply the state understands the problem, because it took them almost 2 years to obtain a workable database to analyze. Even that data is imperfect, but it's the most complete of several incomplete data sets provided. 

The average sentence for drug crimes differs markedly throughout the state, with more rural counties having the highest female incarceration rates.

Stephens County – a largely rural area where Allen and her daughter were convicted – ranked third per capita in sentencing women to prison.

Allen was given a 20-year sentence after police found 20 grams of methamphetamine, an amount that just meets the legal definition for drug trafficking. Still, her sentence is nearly twice as long as the statewide average for women convicted of trafficking.

Susan Sharp, a retired sociology professor at the University of Oklahoma, is a nationally recognized expert on female incarceration. Her research shows justice is not dispensed evenly across the state.

Poor women in Oklahoma’s rural areas are more likely to draw the wrath of judges and prosecutors. Women who can afford private attorneys are more likely to get shorter sentences for the same crimes, especially if they live in urban areas with specialty courts for drug addiction or mental health issues.

“There are some counties that are extremely harsh, that almost anyone convicted will go to prison,” Sharp said during an interview. “The district attorney is the most powerful player in the courtroom, and if they are trying to build a reputation of being tough on crime, they’re going for the low-hanging fruit.”

‘Don’t shoot her’

Allen said she felt for months that someone was watching her – and that a knock on the door by law enforcement was coming. Instead, it was a kick to the door on a chilly February afternoon in 2013.

Allen was smoking a cigarette in her bedroom when she saw Greer drop to the floor. The glowing red laser sight of a gun focused on Greer’s forehead. Allen thought she was a goner.

“Don’t shoot her. It’s me,” Allen said she told the local law enforcement officers who kicked in the door. “I’m the bad one.”

They found the meth in Allen’s bedroom – most of it stashed in a black purse decorated with gold stars – along with glass pipes and other paraphernalia.

Five adults lived in the stone two-story house – Allen, Greer, two other relatives and a friend – along with Greer’s 4-year-old daughter.

The five were arrested and charged with drug crimes, but only Allen was sent directly to prison as a result. Her daughter, now 32, initially received probation, but now is serving an eight-year sentence after a new drug offense last year.

At the time of her arrest, Allen was out of work and waiting for disability payments for a back injury she suffered five years earlier, while cleaning rooms at a Holiday Inn. The state’s disability waiting list never seemed to budge.

In desperation, Allen traded the Lortab painkillers and Xanax she was prescribed by her doctor for meth, which she used and sold. She was caught with 20 grams of meth, the minimum needed to charge her with drug trafficking instead of possession.

At her 2013 sentencing hearing, Allen told District Judge Joe Enos that she’d been addicted to meth for half her life.

“It has destroyed my whole family. … I take full responsibility,” she told Enos. She asked him to send her to a drug treatment program. She had tried to get into treatment in the past, she told him, but no beds were available.

“I don’t ever want to be around meth anymore,” she said in court. “I seen what it does.”

The prosecutor asked for 30 years in prison, while Allen’s attorney argued for leniency – some time in prison, but also a treatment program.

Enos, known locally for running a stern courtroom, (stern or rigidly sexist?) told Allen: “You are a specific provider and supplier of these drugs to many of the individuals who have succumbed to the terrible effects of methamphetamine.”

The drug killed 167 people in Oklahoma that year. Allen had no established connection to any of them.

In the end, Allen took a “blind plea,” leaving the sentence up to the judge. Enos sentenced her to 20 years for illegal drug trafficking. That sentence is twice the maximum amount of time recommended by the state task force.

Enos and the Stephens County district attorney’s office did not return multiple calls seeking comment. Enos retired from the state judiciary in January 2015 and now serves as a part-time municipal judge.

When Allen first arrived at the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center – a 1,200-bed concrete lockup in central Oklahoma – a guard asked her: “Robyn, who did you make mad?” That’s when she said she found out that two women on the same pod received four and five years for trafficking.

Allen wrote to Enos, asking him to reduce her sentence but she didn’t hear back.

“Poured my heart into that letter,” Allen said, sobbing, “and I didn’t get nothing.”

‘They need help’

Female inmates at the Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center sing and march around the yard as part of their Regimented Treatment Program. It’s a boot camp-style program that lasts up to a year.

Shorter sentences for low-level and first-time drug offenders could make a big difference in the state’s overall female incarceration rate.

Reveal’s analysis focused on sentences for drug possession and distribution – two of the top crimes that land women in Oklahoma’s prisons. Women convicted of drug possession there last year were sentenced to an average of 6.2 years – a 29 percent increase from a decade ago.

The exception is Tulsa County, where judges handed down shorter prison terms to women. Sentences for possession there dropped to 3.3 years in 2016, down by a quarter from 2006. Evidence was also suggesting that Tulsa judges have been splitting sentences and assigning shorter prison terms combined with probation or other types of supervision.

Tulsa County bucked the state trend in the number of women sentenced to prison overall, too. While that number has climbed each year since 2009 in the rest of the state, it fell by more than half in Tulsa County.

The downward trend follows the 2009 launch of Women in Recovery, a Tulsa-based nonprofit program that has received national acclaim. While it’s impossible to attribute the decline to one factor, experts say the program deserves a large share of the credit.

Women charged with certain offenses who face long drug sentences are instead diverted to the program. There they receive intensive oversight, including drug counseling, help with employment and life skills classes.

At a graduation ceremony in February, 16 women filed into a packed, brightly lit room as friends and relatives cheered and clapped.

Women graduate from the program with a job, an apartment and renewed relationships with relatives who may have given up hope. The program claims a three-year recidivism rate of about 4 percent. A new “pay for success” agreement soon will allow Women in Recovery to earn money from the state for each woman who successfully completes the program.

But while the program is praised for its impact, it reaches only about 150 women each year.

The director of the state’s prison system, Joe Allbaugh, bluntly assessed Oklahoma’s failure to rehabilitate women.

“All we’re doing is keeping those beds in cells warm for their kids, because there are no tools being offered anywhere in the system to help these individuals stop their behavior,” he said. “They need help, they don’t need prison.”

Less than one-third of women released from prison that needed treatment for drug or alcohol misuse received it in prison, according to an Oklahoma Department of Corrections survey.

Thousands of prisoners have flowed into costlier private prisons, and more than 1,500 are backed up in county jails, waiting for a prison bed. Oklahoma prisons are drastically understaffed and their staff is drastically underpaid: More than one-third of the state’s correctional officers qualify for food stamps.

State statutes list more than 30 crimes requiring those convicted to serve 85 percent of their sentences, including drug crimes. Oklahoma also has a “three strikes” law that can result in women being sentenced to life in prison without parole for drug crimes. 

‘Buckle of the Bible Belt’

The 1,200-bed Mabel Bassett Correctional Center is Oklahoma’s largest women’s prison.

Kris Steele, a former Oklahoma House speaker, had an epiphany in 2009:

Runaway spending on prisons wasn’t translating into a safer state.

“When I began to sort of do my homework,” he said, “I realized that even though we were spending more than we ever had on incarcerating more people than we ever had, our crime rate had continued to increase.”

In 2012, Steele – a Republican leader – was an early advocate for reform, but found himself fighting a losing battle with the current governor, Fallin, and others opposed to reducing penalties for drug offenses.

Steele now runs The Education and Employment Ministry, or TEEM, a non-profit devoted to helping people re-enter the workforce after prison. He continues to advocate for reforms that save prison beds for the worst offenders.

Other red states that tend to be tougher on crime – including Texas, Utah, Kentucky, Mississippi and Georgia – have revised sentencing laws so that most prison beds are reserved for violent and career criminals. Because it costs far less to treat people with drug addiction than it does to lock them up, low-level offenders could be placed in treatment programs and governments could plow the savings back into more diversion programs.

Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater was not among the measure’s supporters. On any given day, his Oklahoma City office handles the fate of more women than any other DA’s office in the state. The change, he said, robs prosecutors of a crucial bargaining chip. However, figures show the number of women being sent to prison from Prater’s county has increased 35 percent since 2009. (Who's he being paid off by?)

When the Bible Code Overlaps into the Penal Code

On a deeper level, attitudes toward women accused of crimes need to change if the state is to shed its No. 1 incarceration ranking, Prater said. He points to a “buckle of the Bible belt” attitude in which women are sometimes viewed “as property.”

“The No. 1 thing that Oklahomans can do to address this issue is change their attitude about how we view women, and how women should be treated," he said.

The state’s 2010 survey of about 300 female prisoners found that two-thirds reported being victims of domestic violence as an adult. About the same number said they were physically or sexually abused as a child, and more than one-third reported being raped as an adult.

*Sidenote* 

The single factor that’s at the core of ALL addictions is trauma (Typically occurring during childhood). The cause of childhood trauma could be:

• Neglect
• The loss of a parent
• Witnessing domestic or other physical violence
• Addiction in the family (and witnessed by the child) 
• Physical abuse
• Sexual abuse
• Emotional abuse
• Parent in jail
• Mentally ill parent
• Children whose parents are overly stressed and/or aren’t emotionally available

Given that most people who become drug addicts have experienced at least one of these factors as a child, does it sound like harsh prison sentences are the best course of action? Jail does not heal trauma, it adds to it. Women are the crux of the family and the community. Sending mothers to jail for drug crimes (instead of rehab) is not only terrible for children, but it's not cost effective and lacks compassion. [Why is Oklahoma being so unfair? Is it that they want to drown in debt so that resorting to private prisons will be seen as a solution, as opposed for payoff opportunities for DA's, Judges, and other officials responsible for jailing people?]

*End of Sidenote* 

Sharp, the female incarceration expert, said some Oklahoma residents have a notion of “proper womanhood” that can warp the process of dispensing justice.

“I think the general population of the state feels that a woman who uses drugs – particularly a woman who has children – violates all the norms in a way that they find unacceptable,” she said, “and they would rather see those children grow up in foster care than to be with a mother who had a drug problem.”

[So they'd rather punish a mother with the disease of addiction, instead of getting her into a program of recovery. her behavior doesn't reflect that of the bible, so she gets 20 years in prison? THIS IS HORRIFYING.]

‘Totally backwards’

Mug shots of Susan Watkins from 2007 (left) and 2015 (right) show the physical toll of her meth addiction. Watkins went through the Dr. Eddie Warrior Correctional Center’s Regimented Treatment Program, where she enrolled in a communications class, worked on obtaining her GED certificate and started learning to read.

By the time she wound up in prison the last time, Susan Watkins had suffered a lifetime of horrific abuse. She said she was raped when she was 5 and forced to watch a relative engage in sexual activity. Watkins, now 52, said that if she and her siblings didn’t watch, they would be punished.

She married at 14 and later became hooked on the rush of meth, which made her teeth fall out. She lost her 23-year-old daughter, who died from a brain aneurysm.

Susan spoke with Reveal in September 2016.

“I done everything to get my drugs. I was homeless. I ate out of trash cans behind McDonald’s,” she said, her voice trembling. “I thought losing my daughter would get me off of it, but I got on it more heavy.”

Watkins’ record illustrates the uneven nature of Oklahoma courts, too. While Robyn Allen’s first felony got her a 20-year sentence and no offer of drug treatment, Watkins has been charged with three felonies and four misdemeanors since 1998, yet has avoided a lengthy prison sentence and was offered treatment multiple times.

Women who end up in Oklahoma’s prisons often lack a basic education. The state had the nation’s deepest cuts to education on a per-student basis. Students in nearly 100 districts attended school four days a week last year because their districts couldn’t afford five-day weeks.

In a recent local news story, veteran Oklahoma defense attorney Rob Nigh blasted the state for locking up so many of its residents at the expense of educating them. 

“I know where my clients come from,” Nigh told The Frontier. “They are the ones that don’t graduate. “And instead of investing in teachers and equipment and technology and a higher level of education, we spend our money designing new prisons and figuring contracts with private corrections corporations (Bingo!), which is totally backwards.

A short documentary, produced by the Glassbreaker Films Olivia Merrion and Emily Harger, endeavors to find out why.

“The biggest challenge was telling this story in a way that was not exploitative,” said Merrion. “We were extremely moved with both women opening up to us, and we felt a great responsibility. We made sure our overall message was clear and this was not just a large pry into someone's life—that it had a purpose.”

Watch the 8 minute documentary here:

What the hell Oklahoma?
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