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Oklahoma County Officials Move to Dissolve Jail Trust Created for Oversight
Article • April 1, 2026 • from PLN April, 2026
Filed under: Totality of Conditions, Staffing, Sanitation, Jail Specific, Vermin
Oklahoma County Officials Move to Dissolve Jail Trust Created for Oversight by On March 18, 2026, officials in Oklahoma County approved a motion to dissolve the jail trust that was placed in charge of administering the county jail in downtown Oklahoma City. Officially titled the Oklahoma County Criminal Justice Authority, …
Tulsa Jail Withholds Records Related to Detainee Deaths
Article • April 1, 2026 • from PLN April, 2026
Filed under: Private Prisons, Wrongful Death, Suicides, Access to Media, Public Records Act
Tulsa Jail Withholds Records Related to Detainee Deaths by The Frontier, a non-profit investigative news outlet in Oklahoma, recently found that seven detainees died from preventable causes in Tulsa’s municipal jail over a three-year period. These deaths occurred due to causes such as overdoses, suicides, an infection, and at least …
Prisoners in Oklahoma Can Now Buy Vapes, Pouches from Commissary
Article • April 1, 2026 • from PLN April, 2026
Filed under: Medical, Statistics/Trends, Commissary, Prison Regulations
Prisoners in Oklahoma Can Now Buy Vapes, Pouches from Commissary by Since early March 2026, Oklahoma has begun to allow prisoners to buy vapes and pouches from prison commissaries. While some jails have okayed these nicotine products, Oklahoma is only the second state prison system to do so after the …
Oklahoma County Jail Could Lay Off Half Its Staff Due to $5.4 Million Budget Gap
Article • March 1, 2026 • from PLN March, 2026
Filed under: Cost of Prison Systems, Totality of Conditions, Overcrowding, Staffing
Oklahoma County Jail Could Lay Off Half Its Staff Due to $5.4 Million Budget Gap by The Oklahoma County jail, a 13-story building located in downtown Oklahoma, is running out of money. Managed since 2020 by the Oklahoma County Justice Authority (OCJA), a jail trust, officials announced on February 19, …
Jury Awards Over $9.5 Million for Oklahoma Jail Death
Article • March 1, 2026 • from PLN March, 2026
Filed under: Failure to Treat, Medical Neglect/Malpractice, Fourteenth Amendment, rights, Monell Liability, Deliberate Indifference
Jury Awards Over $9.5 Million for Oklahoma Jail Death by Chuck Sharman by Chuck Sharman On January 9, 2026, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma made a massive $9,544,375 award to the Estate of Jennifer Crowell, agreeing that her 2020 death was the …
News in Brief
Article • February 1, 2026 • from PLN February, 2026
News in Brief by California: In a ruling that highlights the complexities of holding corrupt staff financially accountable, the California Court of Appeal recently restored the pension of former San Francisco jail guard April Myres, 61, on December 26, 2025. Bloomberg Law reported that federal prosecutors charged Myres in 2017 …
County Jail in Oklahoma Accused of Coercing Detainees to Convert to Christianity
Article • February 1, 2026 • from PLN February, 2026
Filed under: Jail Misconduct, Religious Practices, First Amendment, rights, Religious Freedom/Worship
County Jail in Oklahoma Accused of Coercing Detainees to Convert to Christianity by The Freedom from Religion Foundation (FFRF), a nonprofit advocacy organization based in Madison, Wisconsin, claims that it received a complaint from a community member in Cleveland County, Oklahoma, that the local sheriff’s office was promoting religion in …
Tenth Circuit Reverses Summary Dismissal of Claim Over Prisoner’s Suicide in Oklahoma Jail
Article • February 1, 2026 • from PLN February, 2026
Filed under: Failure to Train/Supervise, Failure to Protect (Wrongful Death), Suicides, Staff Training, 42 U.S. Code § 1983, civil action for deprivation of rights
Tenth Circuit Reverses Summary Dismissal of Claim Over Prisoner’s Suicide in Oklahoma Jail by Matthew Clarke by Matt Clarke On November 26, 2025, the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit reversed the summary dismissal of a failure-to-train claim in a federal civil rights lawsuit over the suicide …
Oklahoma Prisoner Who Escaped Through Hole Killed by Sheriff
Article • February 1, 2026 • from PLN February, 2026
Filed under: Escapes, Plumbing, Jail Specific, Security Systems
Oklahoma Prisoner Who Escaped Through Hole Killed by Sheriff by Joshua Butler—a prisoner serving a life sentence who escaped from the Okfuskee County Jail in Okemah, Oklahoma—was shot and killed by state troopers during a traffic stop on December 31, 2025. Butler had escaped on December 20, but none of …
New Jail in Oklahoma Is Costing More than Triple the Amount Voters Approved
Article • January 1, 2026 • from PLN January, 2026
Filed under: Staffing, Sanitation, Jail Specific, Vermin, DOJ CRIPA Actions
New Jail in Oklahoma Is Costing More than Triple the Amount Voters Approved by In 2022, voters in Oklahoma County, which contains most of Oklahoma City, approved a $260 million bond issue to construct a new jail. That price tag was expected to cover planning, land acquisition, site preparation, and …
Oklahoma DOC Refuses to Publicly Release Body Camera Footage
Article • January 1, 2026 • from PLN January, 2026
Filed under: DOC/BOP misconduct, Access to Media, Public Records Act
Oklahoma DOC Refuses to Publicly Release Body Camera Footage by Despite spending millions to give guards body cameras, Oklahoma’s Department of Corrections (DOC) will not release footage from the devices to the public. As reported by Oklahoma Watch, the DOC claims that footage recorded within a facility would threaten security …
News in Brief
Article • December 1, 2025 • from PLN December, 2025
News in Brief by Alabama: A former Blount County Jail guard received a decade behind bars on October 21, 2025, for a brutal assault that was captured on security video, according to WVTM in Birmingham. Joseph Ray Snow, 45, was sentenced for assaulting detainee Jonathan Calloway in 2022. Calloway, who …
Oklahoma Prisoner Found Unconscious in Cell Hours After Avoiding Execution
Article • December 1, 2025 • from PLN December, 2025
Filed under: Public Defenders, Pardons/Clemency, Life without Parole (LWOP), Death Penalty, Effective Assistance of Counsel
Oklahoma Prisoner Found Unconscious in Cell Hours After Avoiding Execution by On November 13, 2025, just moments before Tremane Wood, 46, was scheduled to be killed via lethal injection, Oklahoma governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican and staunch supporter of the death penalty, spared the prisoner’s life by reducing his sentence …
Oklahoma County Jailers Lose Bids to Derail Three Suits Over Detainee Murders
Article • November 1, 2025 • from PLN November, 2025
Filed under: Failure to Protect (General), Overcrowding, Staffing, Municipal Liability, Deliberate Indifference
Oklahoma County Jailers Lose Bids to Derail Three Suits Over Detainee Murders by Chuck Sharman by Chuck Sharman Claims filed over a trio of detainee murders at the Oklahoma County Detention Center survived motions to dismiss in March 2025. As PLN reported, the lockup was stripped from control of the …
SCOTUS Overturns Oklahoma Prisoner’s Death Sentence After More than 25 Years on Death Row
Article • November 1, 2025 • from PLN November, 2025
Filed under: Misconduct/Corruption, Mental Health, Ineffective Assistance of Counsel, False Statements or Testimony, Withholding Evidence, Evidence - Destruction/Fabrication/Manipulation of
SCOTUS Overturns Oklahoma Prisoner’s Death Sentence After More than 25 Years on Death Row by Douglas Ankney by Douglas Ankney On February 25, 2025, the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) reversed Oklahoma prisoner Richard Eugene Glossip’s death sentence. This is the second time a death sentence imposed upon …
Oklahoma Prisoner’s Execution Was Expedited 
by the Trump Administration
Article • August 1, 2025 • from PLN August, 2025
Filed under: Death Penalty, Death Row, Lethal Injection
Oklahoma Prisoner’s Execution Was Expedited by the Trump Administration by John Hanson, 61, received a three-drug lethal injection on the morning of June 12, 2025, and was pronounced dead by 10:11 a.m., reported USA TODAY. Hanson—who received a life sentence for carjacking, kidnapping, and killing Mary Bowles in Tulsa in …
Prison Gerrymandering 
Alive and Well in Oklahoma
Article • August 1, 2025 • from PLN August, 2025
Filed under: Racial Discrimination, Census
Prison Gerrymandering Alive and Well in Oklahoma by Chuck Sharman As states across the country push to end “prison gerrymandering”—the U.S. Census practice of counting prisoners in the typically rural and white areas where they are held, thereby diluting the voting power of the urban and non-white areas that they …
Oklahoma Supreme Court Kills One Jail Death Suit, 
Threatening Settlement of Another
Article • June 1, 2025 • from PLN June, 2025
Filed under: Systemic Medical Neglect, Private Contractors, Medical Neglect/Malpractice
Oklahoma Supreme Court Kills One Jail Death Suit, Threatening Settlement of Another by In a case with enormous implications for Oklahoma jail detainees, the state Supreme Court ruled on March 11, 2025, that a jail’s subcontracted medical providers are “employees” for the purposes of the Oklahoma Governmental Tort Claims Act …
News in Brief
Article • May 1, 2025 • from PLN May, 2025
Filed under: News in Brief
News in Brief by Alabama: A Jefferson County Jail guard was briefly abducted and assaulted by detainee Reontay Harley, 33, on January 13, 2025. WBMA in Birmingham said that after Harley took the unnamed guard hostage inside a cell, responding jail Extraction Unit guards rescued their fellow guard and restrained …
Cruelty Is Now the Point for BOP
Article • May 1, 2025 • from PLN May, 2025
Filed under: Conditions of Confinement, Bureau of Prisons (BOP), Cruel and Unusual Punishment, Lethal Injection Method of Execution
Cruelty Is Now the Point for BOP by Just before leaving office in January 2025, outgoing Pres. Joseph R. Biden, Jr. (D) removed 37 federal prisoners from death row, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Jan. 2025, p.16.] But incoming Pres. Donald J. Trump (R) immediately directed his new Attorney General …
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