Two Roads to Extraction: Highways, Tax Bases, and Court Debt in Rural Oklahoma
Oklahoma's criminal courts do more than decide guilt and hand down sentences. Instead, they've become a revenue source for the very county governments and law enforcement agencies that prosecute, jail, and supervise the people who owe them money. A new report from Oklahomans for Criminal Justice Reform, Two Roads to Extraction, uses original county-level data to show exactly how this works, and why the burden falls hardest on rural Oklahomans who can least afford it.
