Lawton City Manager John Ratliff and Comanche County Commissioner Josh Powers are in the preliminary stages of discussing “the possibility of a joint city-county jail Trust.”
The city jail is operated by the Lawton Police Department, while the Comanche County Detention Center is managed by the County Facilities Authority, which is comprised of the three county commissioners.
“We’re thinking about having one person to run both” facilities, Ratliff said.
Of course, the two jails house a different caliber of prisoners.
Inmates of the city jail are “low-level offenders” arrested for relatively minor offenses such as public drunkenness, failure to pay speeding tickets, or disturbing the peace, while CCDC inmates include suspected and convicted felons, many of whom are “dangerous offenders,” Ratliff noted.
Another difference between the two facilities is their detainee population numbers.
Lawton’s city jail has a maximum capacity of 112 detainees: 50 males, 50 females, and a dozen booking cells, according to Lt. Charles Whittington, the LPD’s public information officer.
The county jail has a State Health Department- authorized capacity of 283 inmates, and has exceeded that number almost continuously since at least 2006, with the exception of a coronavirus outbreak in 2020 that infected more than 125 inmates and staff members.
Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, the detention center was “always 60 to 80 detainees over” its authorized limit, former Administrator Bill Hobbs told the county commissioners.
The jail’s inmate count still exceeds 283 today. The CCDC had 354 detainees on Nov. 4, Administrator David Weber reported, and the head count on Nov. 14 was still 354. However, 241 of those inmates were in the CCDC and the other 113 were incarcerated in jails in other counties (Greer, Grady, Okmulgee, Pottawatomie and Seminole) under agreements with the Facilities Authority.
Previously Comanche County housed dozens of its detainees in the Tillman County Jail at Frederick, at a cost of $42.50 per inmate per day. However, that ceased after the Tillman County Board of Commissioners adopted a resolution April 29 which decreed that other counties must seek the board’s permission before building a jail in Tillman County.
At the suggestion of state Rep. Trey Caldwell (R-Lawton), Powers, the liaison between the Comanche County Board of Commissioners and the CCDC, had been exploring the possibility of converting the former Southwest Oklahoma Juvenile Center at Manitou into an adult jail that could house inmates from Comanche County.
Whether the Tillman County resolution is legally enforceable is debatable, but Powers in May described Resolution 1732 as “aggressive” and the Facilities Authority stopped sending detainees to Tillman County. Powers estimated that Comanche County was spending approximately $90,000 each month to house inmates in the Tillman County Jail.
Powers directed Weber to send CCDC inmates to the five other counties where Comanche County has contracts before shipping them toTillman County.
“We currently have open beds in multiple counties,” Powers said. “We will redirect our inmates to those counties and use Tillman County much less and as a last resort. I will not approve of or tolerate Tillman County Board of Commissioners taking advantage of Comanche County taxpayers any longer.”
Powers said he had been in touch with prior elected officials in Tillman County who said Tillman County needs $1.3 million a year to keep their jail in operation. Comanche County was – but is no longer – paying Tillman County almost $1 million a year, Powers said.
Another key issue in the proposed joint city/county jail operation is the multiple inmate deaths in the county’s detention center. An Open Records Request submitted by KSWO-TV showed that from 20122022, five CCDC inmates died from various causes, but in 2023 six inmates died; thus, the average multiplied from one death every two years to one every two months. And this year four more inmates died: two in March and two in August.
The Comanche County Commissioners voted unanimously last week to designate Powers as their lead negotiator in discussions with Ratliff on joint operation of the two jails.
“This is the first step in opening up lines of communication,” Powers told Southwest Ledger. “I’ve got a problem that I’ve got to fix. I could definitely use the help.” One possibility is hiring a professional consultant “to sort out” the multiple issues involved in the proposal – not least of which includes liability, Powers and Ratliff both said.