Oklahoma County Jail

The Oklahoma County Commissioners gave their county sheriff permission on Monday to contract with a video production company to film a TV series. The Board of County Commissioners voted 2-1 to approve the contract.

The state Health Department’s jail inspectors filed a report detailing numerous deficiencies in the Oklahoma County jail. The inspectors’ feedback paints a clear picture of an understaffed, malfunctioning jail that has recently seen an increase in deaths.

The Oklahoma County Jail Trust voted Monday to send back more than half of the $40 million in federal COVID-19 relief funds allocated to its budget earlier this year. The move comes after months of protests against the relief funds being transferred to the jail.

The Oklahoma County Board of County Commissioners voted Monday to make the local jail support and house ICE. The decision is in direct contradiction with a county jail trust decision to remove an ICE agent from the jail.

A woman raising her three grandchildren in Bethany was facing eviction after she lost her job to the COVID-19 pandemic. She called Dan Straughan for help but he wasn’t sure what he could do. Straughan is executive director of the Homeless Alliance in Oklahoma City.

A criminal justice advisory group in Oklahoma County reported that last year the county jail’s prisoner population reached its lowest levels in more than a decade. StateImpact’s Quinton Chandler reports. 

In less than five minutes two of Oklahoma County’s three county commissioners voted to transfer more than $34 million in federal coronavirus relief funds to the county jail trust. The board of county commissioners ignored days of protests against the move from local residents and one of their fellow commissioners.

Staff inside the Comanche County Detention Center knew they had a problem when the number of prisoners infected with Covid-19 reached 18 in early May.

Lysol is Lavonne Harris’ most powerful weapon against pandemic.

The custodian for Shawnee Public Schools is wielding the disinfectant inside her district’s school board room to fight off the novel coronavirus that’s infected hundreds of thousands worldwide.

This stuff will “kill all the germs,” she says.

Oklahoma County’s jail is run by the local sheriff, just like most counties in the state.

As news headlines about overcrowding, inmate deaths, lawsuits and maintenance issues became increasingly common, county officials and civic leaders called for a change in jail leadership.

For the past few months a committee has been looking at how to pay for a new Oklahoma County Jail, and made its recommendation on Tuesday.

The facility is only about 25 years old, but it’s had construction problems, mold, sewage in the cells – to the point where the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in and said the inmates faced violations of their constitutional rights.