Tulsa County District Court ordered the releases<\/a>of nearly 70 people charged with both misdemeanors and felonies last week.<\/p>Orders from Cleveland County district judges have helped reduce their jail population by nearly 15%.<\/p>
Jail administrators hope the releases will keep the counties\u2019 jail populations under capacity during the pandemic.<\/p>
Officials in Oklahoma County are also trying to free more of their prisoners who aren\u2019t considered dangerous.<\/p>
But Oklahoma County and some other jurisdictions may face another challenge.<\/p>
The Department of Corrections has stopped accepting new prisoners from local jails, which could contribute to overcrowding at a time when counties are trying to keep populations low.<\/p>
Oklahoma County\u2019s jail population is lower than it\u2019s been in years, but the jail is still overcrowded. Currently, the jail holds more than 170 people who\u2019ve been convicted and sentenced to state prison.<\/p>
Commenting on the prison agency\u2019s decision, Oklahoma County sheriff\u2019s spokesperson Mark Myers said the state is in uncharted territory and all agencies are doing what they think is best to keep people safe.<\/p>
Local police are trying to help the county sheriff\u2019s office keep the jail population under control by not arresting people who aren\u2019t public safety threats.<\/p>
It\u2019s unclear when the Department of Corrections will restart intakes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several counties have begun releasing jail prisoners. They want to have fewer people in their jails for the virus to infect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":201,"featured_media":31471,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,23],"tags":[1230,1231,1227,1228,1229],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/201"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32555,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32549\/revisions\/32555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31471"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/oklahoma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}