Imprisoning females separates families and puts many Oklahoma children in need of nonexistent services.
Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash
Oklahoma is my home state. I love its Native roots and connections to the land. My corner of Oklahoma is called Green Country. Thanks to the Keystone Dam and Arkansas river that runs along my hometown of Tulsa, Oklahoma, I live in a sea of green.
However, within this vast green kingdom is an ugly fact hidden from the consciousness of its residents — Oklahoma incarcerates more women than any other place on the planet.
We imprison 281 out of 100,000 women, which is the highest number on the face of the earth. I believe there are several reasons my state holds this dubious honor:
1) the “good ol’ boy” mentality;
2) nonexistent safety net;
3) lawmakers’ and prosecutors’ disconnect with the will of the people.
“Good Ol’ Boys”
The mentality of the good ol’ boys is pervasive in Oklahoma’s cultural and political climate. The assumption is that when a man does something wrong, he is sowing his wild oats. However, if a woman commits an illegal act, there is something inherently wrong with her, and we need to put her away from society.
Due to this attitude, women receive harsher prison sentences than men. For example, Tondalo Hall received a 30-year sentence for failing to protect her three-year-old daughter from her abusive boyfriend. The boyfriend broke several of Hall’s daughter’s bones. His sentence was just two years. He is out of prison now, but Hall remains incarcerated, awaiting the appeals process.
As you can see, this 1800s outdated thinking is detrimental to women. They need services before they turn to criminal activities. Often, if they had access to mental health care, employment opportunities, or educational programs, they could make better decisions.
Safety Net
Oklahoma has virtually no support services for women coming out of prison. The mental health system is like an unwanted step-child. When State taxes are low, our state cuts services and eliminates programs. Women enter prison in more vulnerable situations than men: they are more likely to use drugs, to receive public assistance, or lack employment income.
The state spends little money on social programs such as childcare and drug treatment, driving many poor women to deal drugs and shoplift to feed their addictions or support their families.
This often leads to generational incarceration. According to the newspaper, The Oklahoman, “Children of incarcerated parents are seven times more likely to become incarcerated at some point in their life. We have in essence created, and I’m sure it’s unintentional, but a generational cycle, and often times I would even call it a generational curse.”
Nationwide, sixty-two percent of incarcerated women are mothers. According to one report, nearly 80% of incarcerated women have minor children. There are very few programs that offer services to the families of these women. However, I know of one program called New Hope of Oklahoma, a Tulsa, Oklahoma nonprofit that provides after-school activities, counseling, summer camp, and Christmas gifts.
The Law
Oklahoma is one of two states where every county voted Republican in the past election. The Republican mindset woefully lacks a value for care and services for our state’s most vulnerable citizens, including women.
Lawmakers and prosecutors in Oklahoma view women as less than. They make and enforce harsher prison sentences for women as the politically expedient solution to crime, even nonviolent offenses.
Many have built their political careers on the backs of campaign promises to be tough on crime. A large number are no longer in office. However, those who remain are reluctant to consider alternatives to imprisonment like drug treatment or supervised probation.
Even though bills go to the State Senate floor aimed at reducing the prison population, they are bottlenecked in committees, and nothing happens. Oklahomans, tired of the archaic power wielded by arduous men, approved State Question 780 to modify sentencing as part of criminal justice reform. Gov. Stitt signed the bill into law in 2019.
Oklahoma’s criminal justice system has a lot of work to do regarding their policies on women. However, the most important thing we can do to address the incarceration rate is to change how we view women, how we deal with them, how we treat our children, and how we act toward each other.