From Policy to Practice: Criminal Justice Reform in Oklahoma

An assessment of whether five policies from Oklahoma’s 2017 Justice Reinvestment process produced their intended effects, drawing on ten years of data to show what changed, what required funding, and what shaped results.

What happened after Oklahoma’s 2017 Justice Reinvestment process? This report, developed with generous support from Arnold Ventures, examines whether five of the resulting policies produced their intended effects, drawing on ten years of federal and state data and interviews with judges, attorneys, law enforcement, corrections staff, parole board members, and directly affected individuals. The assessment finds that a 44 percent decline in burglary rates coincided with changes to burglary sentencing, and that administrative parole cut the time from eligibility to release by 68 percent, while alternatives to incarceration produced limited change until the Legislature funded them. Overall, the findings show that results depended less on the policies as written and more on how they were funded and implemented.