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Oklahoma Governor Race & Over-Crowded Prisons

I did not think much of Brad Henry at first he looked like a duffus but now after a few years he has proven he has done a good job as governor.  Henry raised the teacher's pay and he raised the Okla. soldiers death benefit from 12,000 to 250,000.  When Henry  came into office the former governor, Republican Keating had left Oklahomans with a huge deficit but the Democratic Governor Henry has turned it into a big surplus. 

The republican running against him is "Istook” who has come out  with a deck of cards with pictures of inmates that Brad Henry has  paroled over the last four years.  Similar to the deck of cards in the war in Iraq showing the most wanted terrorists.  Istook is saying that Brad Henry is soft on crime and has paroled all those inmates.  The truth is we have a lower rate of parolees than any other state including Texas.  I guess he thought the deck of cards was a cute idea (for Marketing purposes).

The over-crowding of prisons in Oklahoma is getting pretty serious.  These prisons receive between 30-70 new inmates every day at Lexington Reception to be sent out to one of the 8-10 various prisons.  They have 4 other "private" prisons in Oklahoma where some of the Ok inmates are housed.  Part of the new population coming in

are illegal’s who are being held for INS.   There are several other private prisons in the state that house inmates from the over-crowded system in Calif. and Hawaii they are so crowded in the private prison at Hinton, OK that they are fixing to move 75 inmates back to OK Dept. of Corrections and there isn't room for them.  The Ok county jail is busting at the seams with prisoners waiting to be transported to Lexington Reception to start serving their time since there is such an overcrowding situation inmates are released early to make room for more but nobody wants to raise taxes to build more prisons.

Prison guards are one of the lowest paying jobs so help is hard to come by....so basically the prisoner just bides his time till his release with no opportunity for rehabilitation. Prisoners go in and out like a revolving door except for the more serious crimes of
murder...but room is limited to hold onto the really bad guys...and they too are released before they have served their time

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