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Oklahoma prison reform law takes another hit

The Oklahoman Editorial | Modified: March 1, 2013 at 3:51 pm | Published: March 3, 2013 Comment on this article

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Those costs will instead be covered with state money, at least in theory. We hope this happens, because the Justice Reinvestment Initiative is a good idea, one that's been successful in other states.

But it's looking more and more as though passage of the bill last year may have been not much more than a sop to the outgoing speaker, a way for policymakers to say “look what we've done” but with no real intention to follow up once Steele was gone.

Many of those who remain at the Capitol seem to prefer handling corrections as the state always has, which has left Oklahoma with prisons bursting at the seams. Better to just pull the plug on JRI than to pretend that any meaningful changes are really on the way.

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