House OKs weakened bill on parole for ailing inmates
The Oklahoma House of Representatives passed a bill Tuesday that would authorize paroles for medically fragile inmates — but only after heavily amending the measure in committee to severely limit the types of inmates who would be eligible.
The bill passed the House
81-15 and will now go to the Senate.
Lowering the incarceration rate for nonviolent offenders assessed as being a low risk to the community is one of the key elements of criminal justice reform efforts approved by voters last November.
On the House floor, state Rep. Greg Babinec, one of the House authors of the Conference Committee Substitute for House Bill 1338, was questioned about whether conferees had gone too far in limiting eligibility for the program, substantially reducing cost savings the state might otherwise receive.
As House Bill 1338 was originally written, it would have authorized the executive director of the Department of Corrections to place an inmate with a medical disability on the parole review docket for consideration for a compassionate parole. To qualify, the inmate would have had to be at least 50 years old and serving time for a nonviolent offense.
Conference committee members amended the bill so that only inmates serving time for five specific offenses would be eligible for the program. The listed crimes were concealing stolen property, embezzlement, first- or second-degree forgery, second-degree burglary or possession of a controlled or dangerous substance.
Those changes, along with others, would eliminate from parole consideration more than 1,400 inmates serving time for offenses currently classified as nonviolent, Babinec told House members. As the bill was originally written, 1,874 inmates would have been eligible. The changes cut the number to 412.
Babinec, R-Cushing, said the changes were made because some House members were concerned that some of the crimes that are currently grouped with nonviolent crimes in Oklahoma’s criminal code have violent characteristics. Committee members have listed domestic abuse — great bodily injury, domestic abuse by strangulation, partial birth abortion, trafficking in children and soliciting sex from a minor by computer as being among the crimes that concern them.
Inmates convicted of those crimes would be excluded from the program under the amended bill, but so would inmates convicted of a host of other crimes.
State Rep. Jason Dunnington, D-Oklahoma City, asked Babinec why House members didn’t leave it up to the Pardon and Parole Board to weed out inmates who should be excluded, pointing to the difference in cost savings and saying that might also be the “most just thing to do” in many cases.
Babinec said he thought inmates with a wider variety of criminal histories might be worthy of consideration but suggested that was a topic for consideration in some future bill.
The Department of Corrections has placed the average cost of paying six months worth of medical expenses for frail, nonviolent inmates at $1,080 for offenders between the ages of 50 and 59, $2,116 for inmates between the ages of 70 and 79, and $7,879 for inmates who are 80 and older.
The amended House bill further limits inmates who would be eligible by placing strict limitations on inmates who would qualify as being medically frail or having a qualifying medical condition.
For example, to be considered medically frail, an inmate would have to be considered a minimal threat to society as a result of his or her medical condition, have his or her ability to perform two or more activities of daily living significantly impaired and have limited mobility and ability to transfer from one physical position to another as a result of one or more medical conditions.