Oklahoma County is really good at arresting people and locking them up. What the county hasn’t been good at is managing a safe and secure jail.
Advocates have long argued that the county needs to invest more in its jail and enact meaningful criminal justice reforms to decrease the jail population. Now that downtown development is spilling west toward the Oklahoma County Jail, the city’s power brokers are finally in agreement — at least with the new jail.
County officials are still trying to figure out how to pay for it, which could cost around $700 million. There’s been talk of a countywide election for a new sales tax to help fund it. No doubt the current jail is unacceptable, but it shouldn’t be a surprise if voters don’t trust current county leaders with more money.
The jail is a black eye for the county, but even a new state-of-the-art facility won’t fix the root problems that lead to high incarceration rates in Oklahoma County and across the state.
This article appears in The OG Food Issue 2025.