their clients at the jail is still hindered by staffing and infrastructure challenges. These challenges are top of mind in the new jail design. The study highlighted several aspects of the fourth recommendation that had not been addressed, including: an outdated notification process for filed charges, the absence of a formal system to expedite cases, and the lack of a system-wide electronic court notification reminder system. The report also noted that a previously unfulfilled recommendation was recently achieved through a warrant clearance event, allowing over 180 Oklahoma County residents to resolve outstanding warrants, potentially preventing their arrest for minor offenses. Fortunately, the new District Attorney is aware of these unaddressed recommendations and is working with other justice system stakeholders to create new strategies to address these concerns.
race and other outcomes that are still valid and should be adopted across justice system stakeholders.
Another new recommendation is to create strict deadlines and review points throughout the court process to ensure individuals are not detained longer than necessary. Work on this recommendation could include: ensuring criminal history information is available early in the process to pretrial release decision-makers, including judges; developing a risk assessment that considers public safety and flight risk; determining at what points in the court process, after initial appearance, can reviews occur to reconsider release eligibility, need or the bond amount adjustment; and setting up a system to review bond-setting circumstances where the bond is not set in cases where someone is being held for a violation or warrant from another county.
In concluding the study, CJI noted:
New 2023 CJI Recommendations
“Since 2015, the Oklahoma County jail population has undergone a steep decline, from over 2,500 to now just over 1,550 people. Local stakeholders from across both the justice arena and general community have committed themselves to nurturing a safer, more fair criminal justice system so that Oklahoma County is a better place to live for all its residents. It is critical that this commitment and momentum endure, as the county looks to build on its recent strides and continue to improve its local policies and practices. After all, there is still work to do to fully implement the recommendations made in 2016. The last seven years have demonstrated that Oklahoma County stakeholders can and will address the challenges they face with the required determination to succeed.” CJAC formally accepted the study at a recent board meeting and is already developing plans to implement the recommendations. CJAC is grateful for the diligent work of the CJI research team that visited Oklahoma County on multiple occasions led by Molly Robustelli, Dr. Shannon Streisel and Yasmin Erikkson. To see the full report and related presentation slides, visit the CJAC website at okcountycjac.com/reports.
The scope of CJI’s study was not only to review the past recommendations but to also make new recommendations for CJAC’s work in the next few years. The study reported that racial disparities in the jail population did not improve. While the total number of African Americans in the jail decreased from 2015 to 2023, the percentage of African Americans in the jail actually increased proportionally, while other demographic groups decreased. The study noted that although national standards have not advanced a clear solution to address this nationwide problem, the best practice is to create a robust data tracking system on racial demographics. Such data tracking will provide justice system agencies and partners the opportunity to analyze and report on trends. CJI suggested that the Oklahoma County justice system should develop a streamlined process to share racial demographic data among multiple stakeholders. This recommendation includes the county’s pretrial services and conditional bond release agency, since it currently has not adopted a formal way to track and report racial demographics. CJI noted that the Vera Institute study provided a list of key data indicators for
6
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online