What's being done to lower Oklahoma's high rate of female incarceration?

OKLAHOMA CITY (KOKH) — For more than 25 years, Oklahoma has had the highest female incarceration rate in the nation.

The vast majority of women going to prison in this state are serving time for non-violent, drug-related crimes. While other conservative states like Texas and Georgia have reduced sentences for those offenses, Oklahoma’s female prison population is projected to continue to grow at an alarming rate.

This troubling trend costs taxpayers and tears families apart.

“Oklahoma is quick to judge you,” said Lareshia Nash, who has been to prison for drug charges. “Quick to condemn, but not quick to understand.”

The state puts women in prison at a rate two and a half times the national average.

“Our prisons are at about 110 percent capacity right now,” said Kris Steele, the executive director of TEEM, a non-profit dedicated to breaking cycles of incarceration through education and training. “We are spending more money than we ever have on incarceration.”

Steele says that impacts every taxpayer in the state of Oklahoma.

“So the more money we spend on corrections, the less money we have to spend on education or infrastructure or healthcare or services for kids in at-risk situations - or anything else we may feel like is an important role of government,” Steele said.

He spent 12 years as a state representative and two as Speaker of the Oklahoma House.

“We can’t continue to throw money at a broken system and expect we’re going to get a different result,” Steele said.

TEEM helps those who are incarcerated look at the root causes behind their criminal behavior, like whether a history of abuse led them to drugs.

“The other two times I was locked up, it’s pretty much you’re thrown in, lock away the key till your time’s up, without learning anything,” said Sherri Hill, who is currently incarcerated on drug charges. “I mean, this time it’s different.”

The difference for Hill is her participation in TEEM.

“They should have had this a long time ago and I might not be sitting here again,” Hill said.

Steele says issues of addiction and mental illness are better addressed through treatment than punishment. TEEM also makes sure participants have job skills, a certain level of education, and a safe place to live as they transition out of prison. Lareshia Nash is determined to change her life with the help of TEEM.

“I sold drugs since I was 15 years old, and now I’m 27,” Nash said. “I have nothing to show for it.”

TEEM has given her a second chance to show the world who she really is.

“I’m a great person,” Nash said. “A positive person. A person that’s been through a lot. A person that wants to transform her pain and anger and bitterness into positivity.”

Nash hopes to become a children and family lawyer, since she lost custody of her children while incarcerated. It’s her biggest regret.

“I did what I did and I’m not the victim of nothing I went through in my life,” she said. “My children are, because they’re the one’s missing out on me.”

When mothers go to prison, their children often end up with relatives who don’t always want them or they go into foster care. Research also shows that children of incarcerated parents are actually five to seven times more likely than their peers to become incarcerated at some point in their lives.

Margaret Wallace, a mother of three who has spent time in jail, says she had a pretty normal childhood.

“I did really, really well in school,” she said. “Straight-A student, spelling bee champion.”

But when she got to high school, things changed.

“I ran into the wrong crowd and I started taking prescription pain medication that wasn’t mine and Xanax, and it just went downhill from there,” Wallace said.

She also met her future husband, who became abusive, and she quickly became wrapped up in a world of drugs and theft.

“I was in too deep,” Wallace said. “I was so scared to leave him.”

She ended up in the Oklahoma County Jail at 17 years old.

“When I went to jail the first time, I had just found out a month before I was pregnant with our first child,” Wallace said.

She then spent the next few years in and out of jail, while her grandparents took care of her babies.

“When I got back, my children didn’t know how I was,” Wallace said. “They were scared to be around me.”

Studies show children with an incarcerated mother tend to have a more unstable and traumatic family life, and they deal with higher rates of depression. So when you send a woman to prison, it can affect generations of Oklahomans.

“Thinking that I could have been away from them for 20 plus years, it’s terrible,” Wallace said.

Wallace says her family’s future was looking bleak until she got into ReMerge, a prison diversion program that works with women who have minor children.

According to ReMerge, the majority of mothers in prison in Oklahoma are incarcerated for non-violent offenses.

“So they are no threat to our community, to our families,” said Terri Woodland, executive director of ReMerge. “I think once you hear the stories, it’s really hard to not be compassionate and want to give them a second chance.”

Wallace doesn’t plan on wasting the second chance she was given. She completed her GED through ReMerge and now plans to go to college. She’s also on track to be reunited with her kids.

“My future just looks so amazing,” Wallace said. “It looks like what it should have been after high school.”

Wallace says without ReMerge, she knows she’d be back in prison.

The program provides opportunities for treatment and rehab, as well as helping participants secure stable housing, employment, and healthcare.

“We always like to think of what they’re capable of, not focus on what they’ve done in the past and the mistakes they’ve made,” said Woodland.

Woodland says the numbers show ReMerge is working. 70 percent of participants complete the nearly two-year program, with a recidivism rate of just four percent.

“What we’re doing is effective, it’s saving money, it’s keeping families together, it’s the right thing to do,” she said.

Woodland hopes Oklahoma will continue to invest in alternatives to incarceration, in order to impact not just this generation, but the next one too.

“Rehabilitation is possible, and it’s really important for people who want to be rehabilitated to give people that option,” Wallace said.

The Department of Corrections estimates it costs about $19,000 a year to incarcerate someone in Oklahoma. Providing treatment and supervision in the community costs only about $6,000 a year.

Advocates for criminal justice reform say reducing the prison population will free up resources to invest in more effective services, ultimately creating a better, safer community.

In 2016, Governor Mary Fallin created the Oklahoma Justice Reform Task Force, which recommended 12 bills to impact mass incarceration in the state.

Only three of those bills received legislative approval this year.

The governor says without reform, Oklahoma’s prison population is expected to grow by 25 percent in the next 10 years, ultimately costing the state an additional $1.9 billion dollars.