Criminal Justice Reform Advocate Highlights Misinformation On Okla. County’s Jail Population, Public Safety

A legal battle continues to brew in Del City. Del City's Mayor Floyd Eason said safety concerns are one reason they've filed a lawsuit against the proposed new jail site. 

One criminal justice reform advocate said misinformation is causing fear in the community. The executive director of Diversion Hub, Meagan Taylor, said the jail’s location is not her main concern. She’s concerned about a system that keeps people locked up for what she believes are the wrong reasons. 

Del City leadership set aside tax dollars in February for a legal battle over the county’s proposed jail location that rests 800 feet from Del City limits. “We’re fighting this thing like our lives our depending on it,” Eason said. 

Taylor said community safety is not predicated on where the jail is located. She said mass incarceration makes communities less safe. She pointed to misinformation about jail populations for the fear people feel about a jail being built close to their community. 

Taylor is a former Oklahoma County prosecutor serving families impacted by the criminal justice system. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, there is no correlation between jail time and improving public safety. County data shows up to 80% of people in the Oklahoma County jail are being held pretrial. “They are sitting in custody for some of them years; most of them months,” Taylor said. 

Pretrial-detained people haven't been convicted, and most people face nonviolent offenses. “We are not taking care of the underlying root causes of what got them there in the first place,” Taylor said. 

Many of these people face barriers like the lack of a car. When they miss court appearances, they end up back in jail. “We had a client that started walking to court at 9 p.m. for a 9 a.m. docket,” Taylor said. 

Taylor said people will often plead guilty, whether they’re responsible for the crime or not, so they can get out of jail. “They may lose their housing; they may lose their job,” Taylor said. 

Taylor said people should be less concerned about where the jail is built and more concerned about its purpose. “I would encourage people not to be scared of people that have touched the system, because then that just perpetuates this misconception that we should continue to lock people up,” she said. 

Taylor said improving resources for recovery and empathy repairs communities. “When we’re not focused on fear, focused on labeling people, people rise to the occasion,” Taylor said.

Taylor said one way to improve resources and safety -- is to have more fact-based conversations about who makes up the jail.