Thursday, February 2, 2017
OKLAHOMA CITY – Governor Mary Fallin today released the following statement on the final findings and recommendations from the Oklahoma Justice Reform Task Force:
“Oklahoma is in a crisis as our current prison population greatly exceeds capacity, and we have the second-highest imprisonment rate in the country, with the highest rate for women. Without change, our prison population will increase by 25 percent, and will require three more prisons to be built or contracted.
“To address this, in August I charged the Oklahoma Justice Reform Task Force to perform a comprehensive review of Oklahoma’s criminal justice system and develop data-driven recommendations that will increase public safety by reducing recidivism, holding offenders accountable, and controlling the state’s skyrocketing corrections costs.
“Since then, the members of the task force have spent countless hours studying data to craft fact-based recommendations. I greatly appreciate their hard work and tireless efforts in producing these findings for my review. I know it was not easy, and I applaud their dedication and commitment to making Oklahoma safer by investigating these issues.
“I look forward to working with the legislature to continue the momentum on criminal justice reform. We must make our communities safer and address the high costs of our corrections system. I am confident that we can ensure that Oklahomans get the best public safety return on their tax dollars, and am grateful to the task force for exploring how we might do so.”
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Comments from Members of the Oklahoma Justice Reform Task Force can be found here.
The recommendations of the OJR Task Force can be found here.
The summary of the recommendations of the OJR Task Force can be found here.