Tulsa Jail Shutting Down After Investigative Reporting on Detainee Deaths
On July 24, Tulsa Mayor Monroe Nichols announced that the city will immediately close its municipal jail (TMJ), a much smaller facility than the Tulsa County Jail with a capacity of up to 70 detainees.
The day before the announcement, The Frontier, a non-profit news publication based in Oklahoma, published a story and video that showed the final hours of detainee Justin Benner, who died at the jail in September 2025. Benner, 48 at the time of his death, was initially arrested after a psychiatric episode outside of his neighbor’s home. Instead of being taken to professionals for a medical assessment as required by Tulsa police policy, Benner was taken to the TMJ, where no medical staff were present, and placed into full-body restraints. Benner was dead less than an hour later; examiners could not determine his exact cause of death, but listed a number of factors, including being restrained, as contributing to it.
Benner’s death marked the seventh time that a detainee died from preventable causes at TMJ in the last three years. Additional reporting from The Frontier revealed that jail employees had repeatedly warned officials of unsafe conditions within the jail, to no avail. The jail was operated by Allied Universal, a private multinational security firm that Tulsa contracted with.
Two Tulsa city councilors, Laura Bellis and Lori Decter Wright, praised the mayor’s decision to close the jail, but also said broader reforms are needed. Wright added, “The public deserves answers as to how the City of Tulsa will shift the culture that has led to these repeated incidents.”
Source: The Frontier
As a digital subscriber to Prison Legal News, you can access full text and downloads for this and other premium content.
Already a subscriber? Login