Dominique Gray lost his safety net at 17. He was sleeping outside of the Ralph Ellison Library in Oklahoma City. Beneath the book drop. For a full year, he experienced homelessness until a librarian connected him to a pathway home. How had things gotten so severe? Bouts of depression, constant bullying and fights at school […]
Prison Policy Initiative
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Chicken-Fried News: Free at last
In accordance with journalism’s “Man Bites Dog” rule, Oklahoma has been making national headlines recently for — get this — actually letting people out of prison. First, as reported on Nov. 4 by CNN, the state released more than 460 nonviolent inmates before their original sentences were completed in the largest single-day mass commutation in […]
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Chicken-Fried News: Body count
With 1,079 of every 100,000 people behind bars, according to a study released by Prison Policy Initiative last year, Oklahoma has the highest incarceration rate in the U.S., and even under the most draconian application of state laws, some of those people might not even belong there. Earlier this month, Judge Tom Price ordered Oklahoma […]
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Beyond February
After the abolition of slavery, black Oklahomans continued struggling in the fight for equality. They faced Jim Crow laws, which suppressed their voting rights and segregated the state, until the Civil Rights Act of 1964 gradually began to dismantle those laws. Though Jim Crow laws were overruled, years of court challenges continued to tackle institutional […]
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Reproductive wrongs
In a cultural moment when the societal rights of women to not be subjugated, objectified or otherwise exploited is on people’s minds, Oklahoma lawmakers are attempting to do just that, reducing pregnant women to the status of what state Rep. Justin Humphrey, R-Lane, called “hosts.” Senate Bill 195, sponsored by state Senate president pro tempore […]