StudioTulsa

A Locally Based Call to Rethink (and Reform) How Oklahoma Collects and Uses Its Court Fees and Fines

Public Radio Tulsa | By Rich Fisher

Published February 14, 2019 at 2:18 PM CST

On this edition of StudioTulsa, we're discussing court fees, court fines, collection costs, and other court-related expenses, which, all told, make up somewhere between 80 and 90 percent of the budget for the State of Oklahoma's court system. Therefore, and quite regrettably, our state's jails are by now brimming with people whose only "crime" is being unable to pay such costs. Our guests are both members of an informal working group here in Tulsa that is calling for dramatic reform of how the state's court system gets funded: James Hinds is a Tulsa-based lawyer and William Kellough is a former Tulsa County district judge.

Rich Fisher

Rich Fisher passed through KWGS about thirty years ago, and just never left. Today, he is the general manager of Public Radio Tulsa, and the host of KWGS’s public affairs program, StudioTulsa, which celebrated its twentieth anniversary in August 2012 . As host of StudioTulsa, Rich has conducted roughly four thousand long-form interviews with local, national, and international figures in the arts, humanities, sciences, and government. Very few interviews have gone smoothly. Despite this, he has been honored for his work by several organizations including the Governor's Arts Award for Media by the State Arts Council, a Harwelden Award from the Arts & Humanities Council of Tulsa, and was named one of the “99 Great Things About Oklahoma” in 2000 by Oklahoma Today magazine.

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