LAWTON – The inmate population at the Comanche County Detention Center has begun increasing again, and that has Central District County Commissioner Johnny Owens concerned.
“I don’t know what to do about it,” he said Monday. “But I do know we all have to work together to get this under control: the DA’s office, the Lawton Police Department, the Sheriff’s Department, the judges, Indigent Defense – everybody.”
Part of the problem is “people doing crazy stuff,” Owens said. For example, the jail is typically packed on Mondays with rowdy weekend revelers.
But the biggest problem, he said, is impoverished defendants. “We’ve got a backlog of them. Are fines too high? Is bail too high? I’m sure some of these people can’t afford the fines that are assessed against them, or they can’t afford their bail.”
During a state Health Department inspection on Dec. 13, 2019, the jail held 347 detainees. That number included 330 unsentenced inmates and 17 inmates who had been sentenced.
“There are not enough Indigent Defense System attorneys at this time,” Comanche County Court Clerk Robert Morales told the Comanche County commissioners a month ago. The Oklahoma Indigent Defense System hopes to establish a satellite office in Lawton, OIDS Executive Director Tim Laughlin told the Ledger on Tuesday.
“We cannot allow this overcrowding to continue,” Owens said Monday. “Maybe the other commissioners and I and Bill Hobbs need to schedule a conference call with the Health Department and the Corrections Department and Governor Stitt’s office. We need some help with this.”
In a letter dated June 24, 2020, Barry Edwards, Detention Program Manager with the Oklahoma State Department of Health, directed Hobbs, the CCDC administrator, to submit a plan to “correct the overcrowding” at the jail.
Specifically, the plan was required to limit the inmate population to no more than 95% of the facility’s rated capacity of 283 detainees. A 5% reduction in the CCDC’s rated capacity means a maximum of 269 detainees; any inmates above that number are to be incarcerated somewhere else.
Until 126 inmates and staff members tested positive for the coronavirus in May 2020, the CCDC had exceeded its rated capacity repeatedly for at least 14 years.” Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the detention center was “always 60 to 80 detainees over” its authorized limit, Hobbs told the county commissioners last August.
After the State Health Department imposed its threshold, the inmate population in the CCDC began climbing back up in the last quarter of 2020.
The monthly average head count in the CCDC, jail records show, was: 199 in August 2020; 236 in September; 276 in October; 260 in November; 269 in December; 279 in January 2021 and 317 in February 2021.
The CCDC held 283 detainees on March 1, with 51 others in the Tillman County jail; 291 on March 15, with 55 more at Frederick; 291 again on March 22, with 51 others at Frederick; and 289 on March 29, with 51 others at Frederick.
On April 5 the CCDC head count was 301 inmates – 32 over the authorized capacity – and 51 others were confined in the Tillman County jail.
Comanche County reports its jail numbers to the State Health Department weekly, Owens said, so state officials are aware of the population non-compliance.
Comanche County has ‘outsourced’ detainees to the Tillman County jail since May 2020, at a cost of $45 per inmate per day. From May through September 2020 the invoices from Tillman County for housing and feeding Comanche County inmates totaled $285,790. The total for the next six months was not available at press time.
The Tillman County jail, built in 1999, can house a maximum of 107 detainees, Administrator Mike Logan said. Tillman County can handle as many as 80 prisoners at a time from Comanche County, he told the Ledger last November.
However, “They are at full capacity,” Owens announced at the March 15 county commissioners’ meeting. “We may need to find another place to house inmates.”