Pubdate: Sun, 30 Jan 2011 Source: Tulsa World (OK) Copyright: 2011 World Publishing Co. Contact: http://www.tulsaworld.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/463 Author: Barbara Palmer, Oklahoma Watch Bookmark: http://www.drugsense.org/cms/geoview/n-us-ok (Oklahoma) Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/prison.htm (Incarceration) LOOKING FOR CAUSE IN JUSTICE SYSTEM Justice System Examined in Oklahoma's Top-Rank for Female Incarcerations Editor's Note-Oklahoma Watch is an independent investigative and in-depth reporting team that partners with news organizations and higher education to produce impact journalism in the public interest. This is the first installment in a series of stories in which Oklahoma Watch, the Tulsa World and The Oklahoman are examining the issue of Oklahoma's female incarceration rate. For more, visit tulsaworld.com/okwatch. In 1908, Kate Barnard, Oklahoma's feisty first commissioner of charities and corrections, traveled to Kansas to investigate the alleged torture and mistreatment of Oklahoma prisoners. Oklahoma federal prisoners - and Oklahoma Territory's felons before them - were incarcerated in the state penitentiary in Lansing, Kan., because the new state had no prison. Barnard, elected to her state post before women had the right to vote, had been instrumental in lobbying the first Legislature to adopt prison laws that were then among the most progressive in the nation. "In Oklahoma," she had said, "we would do differently." When Barnard eventually had the Lansing prisoners brought back to Oklahoma in 1909, 16 women were among them. It's ironic that the state history of Oklahoma's female prisoners begins with a reproach to the Kansas penal system. Although corrections officials say that rates of crimes by women and convictions in both states are comparable, today Oklahoma women end up in prison approximately three times as often as women in Kansas. And while Kansas lawmakers are earning accolades for prison reforms that have reduced prison populations by creating alternatives for some offenders, in Oklahoma, the number of incarcerated women is at a historic high. The 'Hockey Stick' Mike Connelly, head of the evaluation and analysis unit at the Oklahoma Department of Corrections, calls it "the hockey-stick look." That's the shape of a graph charting the number of women in the state's prison over the decades, with a long, stable line that suddenly takes a swooping upward turn in the early 1980s. How sharp? From 1910 to 1980, women made up an average of 3.5 percent of the state's prison population. By 2010, that percentage was nearly 11 percent, and the population had climbed to 2,760. The "hockey-stick" pattern is not unique to Oklahoma's female prison population, or to the state. Between 1987 and 2007, the number of prisoners in the U.S. nearly tripled; in 2008, there were more than 2.3 million adults in prison, more by sheer number, as well as per capita rate, than any other country in the world. The same factors that criminologists point to as having contributed to the growth in prison populations are present in Oklahoma: decades of "tough on crime" politics, the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill, the war on drugs and a federally financed prison construction boom. What the graphs don't explain, however, is why those factors have operated so severely on women. The nation's female prison population grew by 832 percent between 1997 and 2007, while the male population grew only half as much. Nor do they explain why Oklahoma women, in particular, are so much more likely to go to prison. In 2004, the state imprisoned more than 10 times as many women per capita as Massachusetts or Rhode Island. Women's Prison Capital That Oklahoma puts more women in prison than any other place on the globe may shock some, but isn't new, said Susan Sharp, a professor of sociology and women's studies at the University of Oklahoma. Nationally, Oklahoma has held that top ranking for 14 of the last 15 years. Sharp says the imprisonment of women is due in part to the state's culture and history, including a wide conservative streak that favors retributive justice. "We are just harsher," she said. Others contend that Oklahoma doesn't have the penal system that it wants but has been stuck with one that has proved, for reasons of politics, to be nearly impervious to meaningful reform. In their view, the root cause for the high rate of female incarceration can be found in the criminal code, particularly its severity toward drug offenders. Laura Pitman, the DOC's deputy director of female offender operations, considers the high incarceration rate a public health problem masquerading solely as a crime problem because about 40 percent of Oklahoma's female prison population have been charged with drug offenses. Improving access to drug treatment and creating more alternatives to prison for offenders with substance abuse problems, advocates argue, would not only reduce recidivism rates for offenders, but would better serve the community now and in the future. Hard Time in Oklahoma Although Kate Barnard fought to create prisons that were more about reforming than punishing prisoners - including establishing a reformatory in Granite - civic zeal for rehabilitation began to cool after 1914, when Barnard left office. By the late 1930s, Oklahoma already stood out among states as a place where lawbreakers, both men and women, were likely to go to jail and stay for a long time. In 1939, a state panel funded by New Deal-era federal legislation reported Oklahoma's incarceration rate had doubled since 1920. In addition to overcrowding, "Oklahoma's prison methods are antiquated," the panel charged. Seven decades later, when the Women's Prison Association reported on three decades of growth in the incarceration of women in the U.S., it cited Oklahoma's high rate of incarceration as a prime example of the "tremendous" degree of variation among states. "Unless we are to believe that Oklahoma women are more than 10 times more 'criminal' than their Massachusetts and Rhode Island counterparts," the report said, "we have to assume that criminal justice policy and practice are pivotal." But, in fact, one argument Sharp has heard over the years is that Oklahoma's women prisoners are especially hard cases. In 1996, when Sharp was interviewing at the University of Oklahoma, a department head - since retired - picked her up at the airport and drove her by the Mabel Bassett Correctional Center, then in Oklahoma City, on the way to the Norman campus. "He very proudly told me that Oklahoma had the highest female incarceration rate in the nation," Sharp recalled. "And when I asked him why, he said, 'Oklahoma has mean women.' " Since then, Sharp said she has thought a lot about the relationship between Oklahoma's culture and its approach to crime and punishment. Her theory is that instead of just one type of conservatism, here there are three. "You have the Deep South, Bible-belt fundamentalist, Old Testament harshness," she said. "You also have the Wild West hang-them-high mentality. And then there's the traditional Midwest conservatism. I think it just kind of coalesces into something unique in this state." Jessica Carriger, an assistant district attorney in District 12, based in Mayes County, has seen firsthand how women, specifically mothers, are judged more harshly than men for the same crimes. "If a husband and wife are both arrested on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine in a home where there is a child present, the general reaction of juries is, 'How could the mother do that?' " said Carriger. "Not to say that they don't hold the fathers accountable, but it seems more reprehensible in the minds for jurors" in the case of the female defendant. However, Carriger asserts, the law - as practiced in Mayes County courtrooms - is gender-blind. A criminal charge is a criminal charge, whether a woman is reviled as a drug addict or evokes sympathy because she is the mother of small children, she said. Cracking the Code Some charge that it is the criminal code - including changes made over the past two decades as a result of the national War on Drugs - that ultimately is driving the female incarceration rate. "Most of what has happened in the growth of women's imprisonment (nationally) is around the drug war," said Woodward native Meda Chesney-Lind, a professor of women's studies at the University of Hawaii and one of the nation's foremost experts on women and crime. "When you start rewriting your laws so that you criminalize women who have relationships with people who are drug dealers, or when you just ratchet up sentences dramatically for very small amounts of illicit substances," huge increases in prison populations are the result. Oklahoma's lawmakers worked to change the state's criminal code in the '90s, with "Truth in Sentencing" legislation that created a matrix of four categories of crimes - violent, sex, drugs, and other. For some offenses, such as nonviolent drug offenses, sentences could be shorter. But those convicted of 11 types of crimes - termed "deadly sins," and including rape, murder and drug trafficking - would serve out 85 percent of their sentences. The legislation was repealed after Lamonte Fields, a first-time, nonviolent adult offender, killed three people while in an early release program for nonviolent offenders. Fields' extensive juvenile record included violence, Connelly, of the DOC, said. After that, few policymakers were willing to endorse shorter sentences for some offenders, he said. Prosecutors, however, disagree that it is easy to go to prison in Oklahoma. Many defendants work hard to get there, said Ray Don Jackson, a former district attorney and former district judge in Woodward County. Crime statistics often don't tell the whole story of why inmates are doing time, because an inmate may have committed violent crimes but could be serving a sentence for a nonviolent charge, he said. Jackson also disputes that drug-related crimes most often only affect the offender, because some are associated with violent crimes and property crimes. "Life brings us circumstances," Carriger said. "At some point, we make choices." According to the 2010 report from Pitman's female offender division, nearly half of the women incarcerated in Oklahoma's prisons report they grew up with mental illness in the home, and 66 percent report childhood physical and/or sexual abuse. More than half of the women ran away from home before age 18. "These aren't women who would scare you," said Chesney-Lind about female offenders. In most cases, "they have very, very sad stories." [sidebar] WHAT'S NEXT Here are some of the stories planned in coming weeks as part of the World's women in prison project with Oklahoma Watch and The Oklahoman. Monday: When women are locked up, their children suffer in a variety of ways, experts say. Feb. 6: Oklahoma's high female incarceration rate comes as arrests continue to rise. Feb. 13: Do drug courts and other special programs help keep women out of prison? Feb. 20: We follow a woman through her first day in prison and examine issues related to incarceration. Feb. 27: Women in a halfway house prepare to leave custody and get back on their feet. March 6: After release from prison, some women have a hard time finding work and starting a new life. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake