Oklahoma’s jails are bound by a series of minimum health and safety requirements codified in state law. For instance, jail administrators must provide detainees with a minimum amount of living space and provide additional supervision of individuals whose screening indicates substance abuse or mental health issues.
The Oklahoma State Department of Health enforces those standards through annual unannounced inspections. Jails that fail inspections must submit a corrective action proposal to the state health department within 60 days or risk a formal complaint being filed with the local district attorney or attorney general’s office.
State jail inspectors found hundreds of violations in 2022, ranging from faulty smoke detection systems to raw sewage leaking into cells and common areas. The Hughes County Jail was cited for 48 health code violations during a March 2022 inspection, by far the most of any facility in the state last year. Erik Johnson, the district attorney for Hughes, Seminole and Pontotoc Counties who took office in January 2023, has sought to close the facility and move detainees to the Seminole County Jail because of the increasingly severe violations.
