Jerry Massie, DOC public information officer, said Thursday that there are currently 1,200 inmates across the state waiting to come into the DOC system, and that number is expected to rise.
"That's basically the size of a prison," he noted.
In Sequoyah County, there are currently six to eight convicted felons waiting in the county jail to be transferred to the DOC intake facility in Lexington, Christine Calbert, Sequoyah County Jail administrator, said Thursday.
Massie said the average wait to come into the system is 60 days, meaning those in the county being sentenced to the DOC aren't going there immediately.
"We've got people waiting that long," Calbert said of the 60-day average.
But the county jail is getting funding for those waiting prisoners. Calbert pointed out the county jail is getting paid $27 per prisoner per day for those DOC prisoners who are waiting to go into the state prison system.
"They're taking up bed space, but helping us financially," she said.
The reason the DOC has resorted to slowing down their intake and relying on county jails to hold prisoners is because of a lack of bed space in state prisons.
"There's not a whole lot of available beds," Massie said. "We're at 98 percent of our capacity."
As people are discharged from the state prison system, beds free up. But it takes time for that to happen.
When asked if prisoners could be paroled earlier as a result of prison overcrowding, Massie said, "The parole board is going to do what the parole board normally does."
Prisoners waiting in the county jail to go into DOC differ from those DOC prisoners who are actually serving their time in the county jail.
Because of a lack of prison beds, DOC has resorted to permanently housing inmates in contract facilities across the state.
Massie said there are currently 6,450 inmates in contract beds across the state. He said that DOC contracts with three private prisons, numerous halfway houses, and some county jails, like in Sequoyah County.
The Sequoyah County Jail has a contract with DOC to house non-violent, minimum security prisoners. Calbert explained that the jail had to be approved by DOC to house DOC inmates, who are sent to the jail from other counties to serve their prison time. For housing DOC inmates, the county jail gets $31 per inmate per day from DOC. The jail, which has a capacity of 114, is currently housing 38 DOC prisoners.
To temporarily and permanently house inmates in contract facilities, DOC must pay the jails to hold the DOC prisoners while they wait to come into the system.
Contracting with facilities takes money, which has been a source of concern in state government.
Massie said DOC has received two supplemental appropriations amounting to $31 million this session. He said the majority of that funding pays for permanent contract beds that the DOC is currently utilizing in order to help the state system get through the year.
He said the DOC has requested additional funding for a bond issue to add 1,500 beds to the Oklahoma State Penitentiary and funding to build a 2,400-bed medium security facility. Massie said they have yet to hear the status of that request, and he doesn't know it that extra funding will be approved.
Massie said if new county jails come online, the DOC could possibly expand into those, depending on capacity of those county jails. Smaller jails can only hold 60 inmates, while larger jails, like in Oklahoma County, can hold 2,000, he said.
But Massie said it will be at least two years down the line before new housing is available. In the meantime, DOC must have funding to contract with outside facilities for those needed beds.
Massie said there are currently about 25,000 people incarcerated in the state, and the Criminal Justice Resource Center estimates the number of DOC inmates will grow by another 900 by the next fiscal year.
