Guest column: Oklahoma City doesn't need a bigger jail; we need a better plan to address incarceration

In reference to the plan to build a bigger jail, District 2 Commissioner Brian Maughan said, “I tell everybody there is no Plan B." This statement shows a failure of leadership. Not only of our elected county officials, but also of the jail trust, the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Advisory Council, the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber and our other city leaders. When the problem is as big and as dire as what we’re facing at our county jail, you’d better have a bigger plan than this and if you don’t, you owe it to us to find people who do.

The horrors of the current jail are undeniable. However, we can’t allow our empathy to be used to exploit the future of our city and county. We need to get people out of the current jail, but building a bigger jail is not the long- or short-term solution.

The fastest way to address the issues at the jail is to lower the number of people in the building. Lowering the population of the jail is the most important issue today and for the future. Our leaders talk about this a lot, but where’s the action? Members of the chamber have put their support behind an ad campaign titled “Fix the Jail'' (which feels misleading considering they specifically are not fixing the jail, but building a new, bigger one). Where’s the ad campaign for lower incarceration rates?

Why isn’t the criminal justice advisory council and chamber using their power and influence to push harder for alternative mental health street teams so we cut down the number of county residents who ever interact with police? If you don’t interact with police, you don’t go to jail.

Why aren’t they calling for district attorneys and judges to change their sentencing practices? We’re about to have elections for a DA and judges. Where are the ad campaigns for decarceration-minded candidates?

Where's the push for bail reform? 80% of the people in the jail are there before they’ve been convicted of anything. They’re there because they couldn’t afford their bail. Why isn’t the criminal justice advisory council pulling the levers of power to change that?

I couldn’t help but feel sick seeing OKC developers getting excited about buying and developing the land the jail is currently on. Move the struggling people out and put in some new apartments or a brewery. Maybe I’m a cynic, but it felt a little like saying the quiet part out loud.

Why isn’t elected county leadership aggressively pushing funds to address housing, something that falls under their purview? They were considering using $40 million of American Rescue Plan dollars to cover costs of building the bigger jail. What if we used that and more to build permanent housing for some of our neighbors who live outside? How many of our fellow residents are in the jail simply because they have no home in which to live?

Building a bigger jail and paying for it with this bond will commit us to greater incarceration for another 30 years. They’re asking us to trust them that, after we give them a $300 million dollar check to build a bigger jail, then they’ll figure out how to lower incarceration rates in our county. This feels like a "fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on you" situation.

I can’t live in line with my values and vote for a bigger jail on June 28. We all agree that the current jail is unacceptable, but we need a better plan to lower incarceration rates before any new building is built. We wish we’d done better in the past, when we built the current jail. We have to do better for the future. We can pass a new bond at any time but not without a real plan, a holistic plan, a plan B.

Walker Milligan is a therapist, mental health advocate and fourth generation Oklahoman.

This article originally appeared on Oklahoman: Oklahoma City doesn't need a bigger jail