On the day Cathy Lamb got out of Mabel Bassett Correctional Center in McLoud, she raised her hands toward the sky and thanked God. Her freedom seemed like a miracle. Once, she thought she would die in prison.
Oklahoma has been releasing more people from prison, but critics say the state has a long way to go in helping those people prepare for life outside.
Lamb was sentenced to life without parole for the murder of a 23-year-old expectant father. Lamb shot Darrell Lovell to death in an eastern Oklahoma bar parking lot in 1991 during a fight she didn’t start. She fled the scene but later turned herself in and confessed.
Lamb was sure what she did was self-defense. She told police Lovell, who was 5’10” compared to her five feet, caused her to accidentally fire the gun she was holding when he shoved her against a truck. Lamb was so confident in her version of events that she turned down a plea deal.
But the trial didn’t go Lamb’s way. She was sentenced to life without parole and, despite the remorse of the man who prosecuted her, spent more than three decades in prison. In 2025, Gov. Kevin Stitt, prompted by a revitalization of Lamb’s story in the news, commuted her sentence.
Lamb knew getting out on parole in 2026 would be an adjustment, but she wasn’t prepared for the amount of trouble headed her way.
“I see why so many girls have such a hard time when they come out,” Lamb said during an interview at her brother’s apartment in Stigler.
Lamb, who is 74 and wheelchair-bound, is grateful for her family, but she never wanted to depend on them as she has to now. When she initially got out, she headed to Arkansas to live near her son. She went to about eight apartment complexes in the Charleston area but the answer was always the same: no felons.
Her parole officer wasn’t much help either. Her release carried no unusual stipulations but he required her to be at her son’s house every evening before dark. If she wanted to go to Fort Smith to go shopping, she had to get a pass.
“It was awful; it was like I was on house arrest,” said Lamb.
Her presence in her son’s household was causing tension. So after just a few months, she crossed the Oklahoma border again and moved in with her brother. Her new parole officer was less severe, but she still couldn’t find her own place to live.
“If I lied on the application, they’d know, and they’d send me back to prison,” Lamb said.
Lamb has a lot of company. Millions of people in the United States face barriers due to their criminal records.
Local control
When someone is released from prison in Oklahoma, according to Department of Corrections policy, they’re given $50 and a bus ticket.
What they aren’t given, according to Lamb, is an education on how difficult it might be to find a home.
Federal rules only bar a few types of people, including sex offenders and meth manufacturers, from public housing or assistance payments. Despite that, many with unrelated convictions struggle. The Vera Institute estimates that 233,000 people in Oklahoma can’t access housing assistance due to their criminal records.
The reason is that much housing policy is created at the local level, which leads to considerable variety. That idea has historical roots.
To ease the effects of the Great Depression, Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration built public housing nationwide. But local officials protested they didn’t have enough say in construction. A system of public housing authorities, or PHAs, emerged, and over the years those agencies gained greater policy discretion.
PHA rules aren’t always clear, though. For instance, the Norman Housing Authority says anyone with a violent or drug offense in the past five years is ineligible for public housing. But an online application puts that lookback period at 10 years.
Thirty miles away in Tuttle, the housing authority has no website or published policies.
That piecemeal landscape stands even as Oklahoma, which imposes sentences 70% longer for some crimes and has the fourth highest incarceration rate in the country, looks to free more people from prison.
A dashboard published by the governor’s office notes the female prison population has decreased 28% since 2019, reflecting a priority of Gov. Stitt’s administration.
But Kris Steele, director of The Education and Employment Ministry, said many service failures are still due to prejudice. He said people going through re-entry are wearing a scarlet letter.
“We’re talking about people who have finished their sentence and have been deemed to be safe to be returned to the community,” said Steele. “I would think, collectively, we would want an individual starting over to do well, to achieve stability.”
But Steele said limiting housing eligibility does the opposite and makes reoffending look more attractive.
“Some of our policies tend to drive people deeper into criminal activity,” said Steele.
Housing officials said they’re choosing the best they can with limited resources.
Tax credit fix
One solution, reform advocates said, is to tie individualized tenant reviews to funding.
The idea is to nix blanket bans that bar certain people from aid. Instead, administrators would have to take into account a person’s full background before denying benefits.
Legislation linking the government’s most popular affordable housing program, the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit, to tenant reviews has been introduced several times in Oklahoma but hasn’t yet made it through the Legislature.
LIHTC potentially provides millions to developers who commit to constructing affordable housing. The program has been expanded under the Trump administration.
Most recently, SB 274 by Sen. Dave Rader (Tulsa) and Rep. Tammy West (Oklahoma City), both Republicans, died after advancing out of committee in 2025.
Both West and Rader said they would be interested in reviving the proposal that died due to pushback from the housing industry. Rader said developers didn’t want to deal with the extra red tape of background reviews.
“President Trump is behind initiatives like this,” said Rader. “Some of the people that oppose, they’re very pro-Trump, if not MAGA, so it’s just confusing.”
Michael Olson with Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform said a law like SB 274 would go a long way toward reducing crime. Homelessness is associated with a 44% higher risk of recidivism.
“In some ways, not allowing people to access housing is raising crime,” Olson said.
“So easy”
Now, Cathy Lamb is filling her days with advocacy plans. She thinks Oklahoma has some distance to go for an effective criminal justice system.
She said if the state parole board recommends something for a prisoner, a governor shouldn’t be able to override it.
She used to have a dog in that fight: In 2000, Lamb was the first person sentenced to life without parole in Oklahoma recommended for a commutation. But Gov. Frank Keating didn’t agree and overrode the board’s suggestion.
Lamb went on to spend 25 more years in prison. She was often flabbergasted to see freed women return with new charges. But these days she has more sympathy.
“Now I know it would be so easy to go back,” Lamb said.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
