A pair of voter-approved state questions from 2016 have made a significant impact in reducing both Oklahoma’s prison population and crime rate, according to a 32-page report released Friday by nonprofit Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform.
State Question 780 reclassified non-violent, low-level drug offenses and certain property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors. State Question 781 mandated that any savings accrued from the predicted drop in incarcerations would go toward the Community Safety Investment Fund, which would pump money into county-level mental health treatment programs.
According to Friday’s report from OCJR, which has advocated for both state questions in the past, the effects of the two have resulted in a 32% drop in property crimes in metro areas and a similar drop in rural areas. They've also resulted in a 47% drop in prison sentences across the state and over $203 million in savings that would go toward community health initiatives.
Michael Olson, one of the report’s principal authors, said this adds to a growing body of research linking reduced mass incarceration to reduced crime.
“At the end of the day, incarceration, through this cycling process, actually tends to create more crime,” Olson said. “These individuals head back to their neighborhoods in a worse financial place than they were before.”
Anthony Flores, research director for the Oklahoma Policy Institute, a which co-authored the report, said the implications of the state questions is wide-reaching.
“You notice the effect of State Question 780 in almost any chart that you see,” said Flores. “It just has had such a significant impact on the criminal justice landscape in Oklahoma.”
Among other noticeable statistics is the report concluded “the amount of new drug sentences resulting in prison has declined by an astounding 77%.”
Despite promising numbers, the report’s authors agree the results are not uniform across the state. The report highlights Greer County, which “ranks 1st in prison sentences per 100,000 people but 60th in property crime rate and 17th in violent crime rate.”
There has also been pushback from state and local officials to SQ 780. According to a 2019 report from the University of Tulsa College of Law, “law enforcement resistance to the measure seems preliminarily to have blunted its impact.” In 2023, Gov. Kevin Stitt signed House Bill 2153 into law, which amended SQ 780 to make a fourth low-level drug possession a felony once again.
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