Bartlesville Radio: The area’s best source for news, weather and sports!

by Keaton Ross, Oklahoma Watch
January 13, 2025

Oklahoma is past its former title of top incarcerator in the world, though progress moving down the national rankings has plateaued. 

The state reduced its prison population by 2.9% in 2023, according to data released Dec. 31 by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, with the number of male and female prisoners declining. The national imprisonment rate increased 2% in 2023, with just 12 states seeing a population decline. 

Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas ranked above Oklahoma, each incarcerating more than 600 people per 100,000 residents in state-run facilities. Oklahoma’s rate of 550 prisoners per 100,000 residents is the lowest reported by the federal agency in decades.

Oklahoma had the nation’s highest imprisonment rate as recently as 2018 when more than 27,000 people were housed in state prisons or awaiting transfer from county jails. At the height of the population boom, more than 1% of the state’s male population was serving a prison sentence and the overall system capacity exceeded 105%. 

The Department of Corrections reported a systemwide population of 23,008 on Jan. 6, including prisoners in state custody and county jail inmates awaiting transfer to the state, representing a slight uptick from the Bureau of Justice Statistics numbers. 

A successful voter-led effort to reclassify several drug and property crimes from felonies to misdemeanors, and subsequent legislation to make that law retroactive, has helped the state chip away at its prison population since the late 2010s. 

After years of modest reforms, lawmakers passed House Bill 1792 last May, requiring courts statewide to use a felony classification system beginning in 2026. Criminal justice reform advocates are hopeful the enhanced structure could lead to lighter sentences for some nonviolent offenders, though the measure is not retroactive. 

“We look forward to working with state policymakers next session to ensure that this policy actually decreases prison beds and lowers unnecessarily high and ineffective prison sentences in accordance with the Reclassification Council’s mandated duties,” Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform Executive Director Damion Shade said in a written statement after the bill passed. “Oklahoma is still a top incarcerator of individuals per capita overall, with many sentences being the longest in the country and fines and fees which keep individuals in the system.”

The deadline for lawmakers to introduce bills and joint resolutions is Jan. 16 at 4 p.m. The 2025 legislative session commences Feb. 3.

Note: This story was updated to correctly spell Damion Shade's name.

This article first appeared on Oklahoma Watch and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.