Chapter 16 | Section 2
High Incarceration Rates
Oklahoma ranks third among states in overall incarceration rates. And many, including women, are sentenced for nonviolent crimes such as drug offenses or property crimes. Women’s incarceration rates have been increasing at almost double the rate of men since 1985. In Oklahoma and in the United States more broadly, women of color are arrested and imprisoned at a higher rate than men. We know that high incarceration rates harm families. More than one in ten children in Oklahoma have experienced having at least one incarcerated parent during their childhood.
Another imbalance in Oklahoma’s prison and jail populations is the high incarceration rate for Black and brown people. For example, while Black Oklahomans represent about 7 percent of the state’s population, more than 26 percent of people in Oklahoma’s prisons are Black. Latinx Oklahomans are incarcerated at two times the rate of white Oklahomans. And Native women are incarcerated in Oklahoma at three times the rate of white women.
Since the 1980s the number of prisoners in Oklahoma has increased. A truth-in-sentencing law passed in Oklahoma in 1999 required that people convicted of violent crimes serve 85 percent of their sentence before becoming eligible for parole. The law increased the length of time people had to serve. Between 2008 and 2017 the incarcerated population increased more rapidly as the parole board granted fewer paroles and the total number of parole applications decreased. Paroles dropped by 77 percent during this time.
All of this began to change in 2016 when Oklahoma voters approved two ballot initiatives promoting meaningful criminal justice reform. State Question 780 made drug possession a misdemeanor rather than a felony, and State Question 781 directed the Office of Management and Enterprise Services to determine the savings to the state from these changes and to put that surplus amount into a new fund for county governments to provide substance abuse and mental health services. The criminal justice reform measures went into effect in 2017 and had an immediate impact in reducing the number of felony filings in Oklahoma. Two years later the legislature made State Question 780 retroactive, so that people convicted of felonies for crimes that became misdemeanors could apply to have their sentences commuted by the Pardon and Parole Board. In 2019 Governor Kevin Stitt commuted the sentences of 450 inmates, the first group to benefit from the new policy.
This graphic from OU’s student newspaper The Oklahoma Daily shows how fracking works. First, a mixture of water, sand, and chemicals is injected into the ground at extraordinarily high pressure. This process creates cracks deep underground, which free oil and gas trapped in a layer of shale, allowing the oil and gas to be extracted for production.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
Map of underground injection wells and major oil and gas wells in twenty-first-century Oklahoma. Oil and natural gas remain at this time the top economic industries in the state. Hydraulic fracturing or fracking is an industrial practice in the oil and gas industry that involves injecting wastewater disposal deep underground.
Courtesy of Brad Watkins, PhD.
The Teacher Walkout of 2018
Oklahoma teachers organized a walkout in 2018. They wanted better pay and for their salary increases to be a permanent part of the state’s education budget. Republicans held a supermajority in the Oklahoma legislature, which meant they had the majority of seats in the state house and state senate. Because some Republicans did not support a tax increase to fund education, the majority of Republicans who did needed Democratic support to fund these changes to the education budget. State law requires the legislature to fund education by April 1, so this is why April 2 was the date of the teacher walkout. About two hundred local school boards passed resolutions supporting the teacher walkout. Those districts represented about 75 percent of Oklahoma’s public school teachers and students.
During the 2018 teacher walkout, tens of thousands of educators, students, and other concerned citizens demonstrated outside the Oklahoma State Capitol. Some teachers even walked over 110 miles from Tulsa to Oklahoma City to be a part of the demonstrations. This photo depicts people cheering on the arrival of the Tulsa teachers as they were approaching the Capitol.
Courtesy of the Oklahoma Historical Society.
The last time teachers organized a walkout in Oklahoma was in April 1990 during Governor Henry Bellmon’s second term. He had made education reform a centerpiece of his agenda. During the walkout teachers lobbied legislators at the State Capitol in Oklahoma City for better pay and improved working conditions. The legislature responded by passing House Bill 1017 (also called the Education Reform and Funding Act of 1990), providing higher pay, smaller class sizes, and an increase in general funding for common education. House Bill 1017 was a significant milestone in improving Oklahoma’s public education system.
For nine days in early April 2018, almost 30 years later, as many as 50,000 educators, students, and other concerned citizens participated in the teacher walkout each day at the Oklahoma State Capitol. Inside the building, songs and chants from teachers at the rotunda could be heard on the House and Senate floors. Outside the building, protestors carried signs and marched around the Capitol. On Tuesday, April 10, a group of Tulsa teachers arrived at the State Capitol to join the walkout after walking 110 miles over seven days from Tulsa to Oklahoma City. The legislature quickly started to draft legislation during the first three days of the walkout. Then Governor Fallin signed a teacher pay-raise bill.
Dedicated educators rarely pass up the chance to turn any situation into a learning opportunity. Just as Chad Kirchen used his experiences in Iraq and Afghanistan to develop lesson plans, other Oklahoma teachers used the walkout as an opportunity to educate. Brook Bullock and Regan Killackey, two English teachers from Edmond Memorial High School, created a “classroom at the Capitol” where they provided instruction to students. Gabrielle Davis, a senior student at Edmond Memorial, said that the classroom at the Capitol was “eerily similar to what class is like in the classroom—overcrowded, cold, not enough supplies.” Some teachers used the walkout as an opportunity to talk about how bills become laws and to discuss how public education is funded. Teacher skills came in handy in another way as well during a particularly tense moment at the Capitol. A child went missing. One Oklahoma teacher stepped in and told everyone in the crowd to sit down. The only person left standing was the missing child. Crisis averted.
While some Oklahomans were critical of the walkout, due to the missed instruction time and the childcare challenges that arose from teachers being absent, many Oklahomans voiced strong support for the teachers. Oklahoma businesses offered their support as well. Free food, classroom supplies, yoga classes, and massages are examples of donations made to teachers during the walkout. The show of public support had a major impact. The teacher walkout of 2018 resulted in a house bill that provided historic raises for teachers and support staff and nearly $500 million in new education funding. It led to the Oklahoma legislature’s first tax increase since the previous teacher walkout, twenty-eight years earlier. The house bill makes clear the new funds were to pay for teacher raises ($6,000 for each teacher) and raises for school support staff ($1,250 for each staff member). It also required that an additional $50 million go toward general education funding.
Many of the teachers who participated in the walkout were inspired to seek political office. Sixteen educators, both Republicans and Democrats, won seats in the State House of Representatives in 2018. The education caucus increased from 9 to 26 members. Trish Ranson, for example, a music education teacher at Westwood Elementary School in Stillwater, participated in the walkout in April and then decided to run as state representative for Oklahoma’s 34th District. “Some of the representatives were absent, or not accepting visitors, or literally talking in circles and not listening to the teachers’ concerns,” Ranson recalled. “That’s what frustrated me the most and got me thinking there’s got to be a better way. We need people in the legislature who can work together.” After 2018, educators running for office became a trend in Oklahoma and throughout the country.
Oklahomans and Political Engagement
In Oklahoma, there are lots of ways to be politically engaged. You can register to vote if you are a citizen of the United States, a resident of the state of Oklahoma, and at least 18 years old. Individuals who are at least 17½ years old may pre-register to vote in Oklahoma if they meet all eligibility requirements. Applicants who pre-register cannot vote until they turn 18 years old and the application has been approved by the applicant’s County Election Board Secretary. Applicants will be mailed a Voter ID card upon approval of their registration.
Another way to become politically engaged is to educate yourself about Oklahoma’s government and its history. It is important to know how Oklahoma’s constitution and government have changed over time. Even as the size of the federal government grew bigger over the course of the twentieth century, many Oklahomans remained strong supporters of federalism, which emphasizes the importance of putting more power in the hands of the states rather than the federal government. As we discussed in chapter 6, Oklahomans must follow both the state and the US Constitution, but the state is free to make its own laws so long as those laws do not conflict with the US Constitution.
The state legislature and the governor play important roles in the process of turning proposed bills into laws. But Oklahoman citizens also play an important role. Citizens can propose new legislation through initiatives, and they also are responsible for electing officials at various levels of government. Oklahomans elect their US senators and members of the US House of Representatives as well as their governor and members of both houses of the state legislature. They also participate in smaller, more local elections, including those to elect mayors of cities and school board members.
By Oklahoma law, there are nine county offices where the officials responsible for the offices are elected by the eligible voters within the county. The elected officials are three county commissioners, a county clerk, a county assessor, a county treasurer, a county sheriff, a court clerk, and a district attorney. The district attorney is elected by the voters from one or more counties within a district. Statutory law establishes the county or counties comprising a district. Each elected officer serves a four-year term in office. The terms stagger so that every two years at the November general election there are ballots for several county offices.
In addition, every county in Oklahoma has three county commissioners’ districts. These districts are approximately equal in population and are numbered as district one, two, and three. A county commissioner is elected by the eligible voters within a district to serve on the board of county commissioners. The board of county commissioners is the chief administrative body for the county. Many citizens perceive a county commissioner as mainly being responsible for maintaining and constructing the county roads and bridges. While these are important duties required by the office, a county commissioner, as a member of the board, is also responsible for setting and administering policies for the county.
Oklahoma has grown a lot since becoming a state in 1907, and this is reflected in the way the government works. The state maintains up-to-date information on elected officials, voting, and important policy changes at the website Oklahoma.gov, which is an important resource for all Oklahomans. As we saw with the COVID-19 pandemic, sometimes unforeseen challenges require rapid responses from the government, so this timely sharing of information with the public is vital. Such challenges also provide new reasons for citizens to engage in discussions about how best to respond to new developments as they unfold.