SUMMARY: The state auditor’s initial report reveals “questionable spending” at the Oklahoma Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse under Commissioner Ali Friesen. The department overspent nearly \$30 million, continuing high payroll and professional services expenses despite a drop in Medicaid reimbursements after the pandemic. Executives received six-figure salaries and staff raises over 10%, while funds went to costly items like promotional Narcan vending machines and a Super Bowl ad. Leadership ignored budget deficits, failed to inform legislators, and allegedly intimidated employees during the investigation. The absence of a qualified CFO contributed to financial mismanagement reminiscent of a 2017 health department scandal.
Initial audit finds ‘questionable spending’ at Dept. of Mental Health & Substance Abuse
Stay informed about Oklahoma news and weather! Follow KFOR News 4 on our website and social channels.
Felecia Jackson’s husband was transferred to the violent, privately operated Lawton Correctional Facility, closer to their home but infamous for inmate homicides and poor medical care. The GEO Group runs Lawton, profiting per prisoner, resulting in costly commissary items and limited programs. Oklahoma plans to purchase Lawton for \$312 million, ending private prisons in the state, aiming for better standards and reduced violence by September 2025. The Department of Corrections will offer state employment to staff and enhance inmate programs. Lawton’s transition follows concerns over safety, violence, and lack of rehabilitation efforts under private management.
by Keaton Ross, Oklahoma Watch May 23, 2025
Felecia Jackson had mixed emotions when she received news that her husband, Eric Jackson, would be transferred from the James Crabtree Correctional Center in Helena to a sprawling private prison in Lawton.
The Lawton Correctional Facility is two hours closer by car to her home in Ardmore, allowing for cheaper and quicker trips to visit. But it was difficult to look past the prison’s violent reputation, with gruesome murders and allegations of subpar medical care frequently making headlines. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections called Lawton the state’s most violent prison as contract negotiations with The GEO Group, a Florida-based company that owns and operates the facility, grew contentious last summer.
Fears of violence have materialized since Eric Jackson arrived in early 2024. The Department of Corrections has investigated multiple homicides at the prison since a one-year contract extension was approved last June, including a case where a prisoner stabbed and partially decapitated his cellmate on March 5. Another prisoner allegedly used a piece of handmade string to murder his cellmate on Dec. 7.
Felecia Jackson said the GEO Group’s private business model, aimed at turning a profit on a per-prisoner per diem it receives from the state, has also been apparent and frustrating. Commissary items are more expensive, fees to use state-approved tablets are inflated and there are fewer programs to keep prisoners occupied, she said.
The GEO Group did not respond to a request for comment about a June 2024 statement vowing to increase program availability and out-of-cell time at the Lawton prison.
“I cannot stand Lawton,” Felecia Jackson said. “I despise that place being a private prison. They think they can just make their own rules and don’t have to follow policy.”
Felecia Jackson and other family members of prisoners at the Lawton facility said they are optimistic about the Department of Corrections’s pending purchase of the 2,600-bed prison, Oklahoma’s largest and only privately operated correctional facility that houses more than 10% of the state prison population.
“I have been a state employee, and I think they have higher standards and more to lose,” said Cherry Love, a Baltimore, Maryland resident whose son has complained of a monthslong wait to see a mental health professional while incarcerated at Lawton.
The House and Senate approved a pair of bills on Thursday to purchase the prison outright for $312 million. Gov. Kevin Stitt, who vetoed a per-diem increase for the Lawton prison last summer and has lauded efforts to close private prisons, said Wednesday he does not plan to veto any appropriations bills. The proposed purchase includes all assets within the facility, including vehicles, medical and kitchen equipment.
The move is poised to rid Oklahoma of private prisons for the first time since 1991, when the Great Plains Correctional Facility in Hinton opened. As recently as 2020, 23% of Oklahoma’s prison population was housed in private prisons, which have long faced criticism for cutting corners on food, staffing and medical care to turn a profit.
House Appropriations and Budget Chair Trey Caldwell, a Republican from Faxon whose district includes the private prison, said frustrations have been brewing on both sides for years. The Department of Corrections has bemoaned the high rate of violence, while The GEO Group claims violent prisoners had their security classification lowered to be eligible for placement at Lawton. He said the tensions have left the company unwilling to negotiate beyond a short-term, transitional contract extension.
Though the state has reduced its prison population by more than 15% over the past five years, Caldwell said most of the reduction has been at minimum security prisons, making vacating Lawton a logistically challenging proposition. The Department of Corrections said other vacant, privately owned prisons in the state, including the North Fork Correctional Facility in Sayre and Diamondback Correctional Facility in Watonga, have significant maintenance or staff recruitment issues.
“I know there are political concerns that private companies shouldn’t be in the prison business, but this piece of legislation is not a political statement,” Caldwell told members of the House Joint Committee on Appropriations and Budget on Monday. “It’s about how we fix a problem to keep our correctional officers safe and make sure we are being humane in our treatment of the people we have incarcerated.”
The Department of Corrections plans to offer state employment to all Lawton employees at or above their current wage, pending a background check, Chief of Public Relations Kay Thompson said. The agency anticipates the prison will begin operating as a state-run facility on Sept. 1.
Thompson said state prison officials plan to evaluate Lawton’s population and separate groups that are the most conflict-prone. She said the strategy has worked well at the Allen Gamble Correctional Facility in Holdenville, which transitioned from a private to a state-run facility in October 2023, and several other prisons, contributing to a 14% reduction in serious inmate assaults from fiscal year 2023 to 2024.
“While violence can still occur due to the nature of the incarcerated population, we make data-driven decisions that have consistently reduced incidents at Allen Gamble and systemwide,” Thompson said in a written statement.
State prison officials will review program offerings at Lawton and make additions as resources allow, Thompson said, but that process could take months.
At James Crabtree, Felecia Jackson said her husband benefited from numerous programs, including an anger management course and a wild horse training opportunity. At Lawton, she said most of the programs are run on state-issued tablets and men are lucky to get one hour of outdoor recreation time per week.
“They need more outlets so that the violence will stop,” she said. “If they have things to do to keep their mind busy, it would keep a lot of them off drugs, give them hope and give them something to work for. DOC has a lot of things like that they can implement at this facility to help.”
While the prison purchase deal is now headed to Stitt’s desk, it wasn’t an easy sell for several lawmakers. Senate Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, said several members of the upper chamber were caught off guard with the request, which was not included in the Department of Corrections’ fiscal 2026 budget request, but that the state lacked alternatives.
“A lot of us were very uncomfortable feeling like we got information at the end and now we have to make a quick decision,” Paxton said. “That is concerning. But I am convinced of the need to make sure those 2,300 prisoners are properly incarcerated. That is not a group you want to furlough.”
Sen. Darcy Jech, R-Kingfisher, was among a bipartisan group of six senators to vote against the prison purchase bill. In a budget committee meeting, he said the Legislature and Department of Corrections should have been weighing solutions much sooner than the end of the legislative session.
“We shouldn’t be given a few weeks to consider this,” he said. “There are other options, other prisons.”
The GEO Group would also have had options had the state elected to move its prisoners out of Lawton. The company’s stock price has nearly doubled since President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, with the company inking several deals to reopen former private prisons as immigration detention centers.
Oklahoma Watch, at oklahomawatch.org, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that covers public-policy issues facing the state.
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Center-Left
This content leans center-left as it focuses on the problems associated with privatized prisons, highlighting issues such as violence, inadequate medical care, and profit-driven motives negatively impacting prisoner welfare. It also portrays government intervention—specifically the state’s purchase of a private prison—as a positive, corrective measure. While the reporting includes perspectives from Republicans and provides facts, the framing suggests a critical viewpoint on privatization in the prison system and advocates for more humane treatment, aligning with center-left concerns about social justice and public accountability.
www.thecentersquare.com – By Thérèse Boudreaux | The Center Square – (The Center Square – ) 2025-05-23 13:44:00
The U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked 4-4 on the case of St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond, leaving the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling that barred the religious charter school from receiving public funding in place. St. Isidore, a Catholic school accepting nonreligious students, had joined Oklahoma’s public charter program in 2023. The state attorney general argued this violated the separation of church and state by funding a religious institution. The Supreme Court’s split leaves the broader question of religious charter schools unresolved but highlights ongoing debates about public funding for private religious education.
(The Center Square) – The constitutionality of religious charter schools remains an open question after the U.S. Supreme Court deadlocked, 4-4, over the St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School v. Drummond case Thursday.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett had recused herself from the case.
The one-page judgment left the Oklahoma Supreme Court’s ruling in place, effectively affirming that St. Isidore of Seville Catholic Virtual School cannot receive public funding.
The case stems from the Oklahoma Statewide Virtual Charter School Board allowing the religious school in 2023 to join the dozens of other charter schools across the state. Like traditional public schools, charter schools are taxpayer-funded and tuition-free.
Though identifying as a Catholic school, St. Isidore accepts nonreligious students and does not require a statement of faith. The charter school board reasoned that St. Isidore contracting with the state to provide free public education as a privately run entity does not mean its religious activities would constitute “state actions.”
But Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond disagreed and sued the charter school board, arguing that allowing St. Isidore to join the public charter school program amounts to the state sponsoring a particular religion. After the state’s high court ruling, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
St. Isidore argued that its exclusion from the state’s charter school program, simply because of its religious identity, violated the First Amendment’s free exercise clause.
But in a social media post celebrating the Supreme Court’s stalemate, Drummond also claimed to be upholding religious liberty, from a wider standpoint.
“The Supreme Court has ruled in favor of my position that we should not allow taxpayer funding of radical Islamic schools here in Oklahoma,” Drummond said. “I am proud to have fought against this potential cancer in our state, and I will continue upholding the law, protecting our Christian values and defending religious liberty.”
The judgment only applies to this specific case and leaves the question of religious charter schools open. But it also puts a spotlight on private religious schools and students that are currently eligible for other state funds, such as scholarships or assistance for students with disabilities.
In 2022, the Supreme Court overturned the state of Maine’s ban on state tuition assistance to students attending religious schools, leaving St. Isidore advocates hopeful for a similar result.
A Thursday statement from the Oklahoma Statewide Charter School Board’s executive director, Rebecca Wilkinson, accepted the Supreme Court’s ruling but reflected on the complicated nature of the issue.
“The split decision of the court affirms this was indeed a complicated matter with a wide spectrum of views on the appropriate relationship between education, public funding, and religious institutions in our state and country,” Wilkinson said. “We will move forward in that vein, ensuring our policies and practices reflect both the rule of law and commitment to all students.”
Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.
Political Bias Rating: Centrist
The article presents a factual report on the legal dispute regarding the constitutionality of religious charter schools receiving public funding, focusing on the recent U.S. Supreme Court deadlock. It summarizes the positions and statements from key actors on both sides without endorsing or criticizing either viewpoint. The tone remains neutral and informative, avoiding loaded language or partisan framing. The piece distinguishes clearly between describing the constitutional arguments, actions taken by officials, and public reactions without promoting a specific ideological stance. Overall, it adheres to balanced reporting by presenting relevant facts and quotes from multiple perspectives.
SUMMARY: Friday brings a mild chance of daytime showers and isolated thunderstorms, but more significant storms develop overnight, moving southeast with a moderate severe risk (2 out of 5). Large hail up to golf ball size and wind gusts of 60-70 mph are possible late Friday night into early Saturday. Saturday’s storms also occur mainly overnight with a similar risk level, but tornado threat increases slightly (3-4 out of 10) after 5–6 p.m. Sunday’s storms start earlier in the afternoon with continued risks of large hail, tornadoes, and damaging winds. Memorial Day Monday has the highest rain chance but no severe weather expected.
KOCO 5 Meteorologist Joseph Neubauer says our next risk for severe weather is tonight. Large hail and damaging winds are possible. There are more severe weather risks Saturday and Sunday, bringing a higher tornado threat.
