HELP US GET YOU THE DATA YOU NEEDThe Prison Policy Initiative specializes in producing the information that you need to support campaigns for justice in your state. Can you help us expand this work?
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—Peter Wagner, Executive Director Donate
Oklahoma has an incarceration rate of 993 per 100,000 people (including prisons, jails, immigration detention, and juvenile justice facilities), meaning that it locks up a higher percentage of its people than any democracy on earth. Read on to learn more about who is incarcerated in Oklahoma and why.
34,000 people from Oklahoma are behind bars
Additionally, the number of people impacted by county and city jails in Oklahoma is much larger than the graph above would suggest, because people cycle through local jails relatively quickly. Each year, at least 96,000 different people are booked into local jails in Oklahoma.
Rates of imprisonment have grown dramatically in the last 40 years
Today, Oklahoma’s incarceration rates stand out internationally
In the U.S., incarceration extends beyond prisons and local jails to include other systems of confinement. The U.S. and state incarceration rates in this graph include people held by these other parts of the justice system, so they may be slightly higher than the commonly reported incarceration rates that only include prisons and jails. Details on the data are available in States of Incarceration: The Global Context. We also have a version of this graph focusing on the incarceration of women.
People of color are overrepresented in prisons and jails
Oklahoma's criminal justice system is more than just its prisons and jails
The high cost of being incarcerated in Oklahoma
Prisons and jails in Oklahoma are increasingly shifting the cost of incarceration to people behind bars and their families, hiding the true economic costs of mass incarceration:
Oklahoma suspended its $4 medical copays in prisons at the beginning of the pandemic for flu related medical visits — It should eliminate them entirely.
People on parole in Oklahoma can be sent back to prison for "associating" with anyone who has a felony or misdemeanor conviction — even loved ones who are trying to support them
The cost of incarcerating older people is incredibly high, and their risk of reincarceration is incredibly low, yet 13% of people in Oklahoma prisons are over the age of 55. Why is the state keeping so many older people locked up?
Oklahoma released fewer people on parole in 2020 than they had in 2019, and approved a smaller percent of parole applications.
Oklahoma failed to utilize one of the most obvious, and easiest, tools for reducing the prison population — stopping prison admissions for technical violations of probation and parole (which are not crimes).
For more detail, see our report States of Emergency. Or check out these other resources: