More ugly repuke state politics....

[CAG]

http://newsok.com/oklahoma-prison-reform-loses-favor-emails-show/article/3921156

"Emails obtained by The Oklahoman, the Tulsa World, and The Associated Press show that a Fallin aide expressed concern that President Barack Obama favored prison reform, too. The governor's chief of staff wrote in reply: “Lovely.”

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Oklahoma remains No. 1 in per capita incarceration of female inmates and No. 4 in male incarceration rates. The state is running out of space and money to house and staff its packed prison population. According to the Council of State Governments report that initially examined how the reforms would benefit Oklahoma, Oklahoma's prison population outpaced the state's overall population growth from 2000 to 2010, while corrections appropriations rose more 30 percent over the decade.

Thousands of pages of emails recently released by Fallin's administration, many months after they were originally requested by multiple news organizations, shed light on potential reasons the governor's office dropped prison reform efforts in 2013 like a hot potato.
“My thought is why further tie ourselves to liberal corrections reforms groups?” Chief of Staff Denise Northrup wrote in a discussion about whether Oklahoma should participate in a joint European-American prison project.

Reporters from the three media outlets found some Fallin staff members also emailed among themselves a Sooner Tea Party newsletter that derides JRI as “soft on crime.” Her staff members also shared a news story including remarks that Fallin's biggest fear in 2014 would be a challenge from the right.

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General Counsel Steve Mullins, who said he serves as the governor's lead policy adviser on the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, maintains Fallin is fully supportive of the law and it is being implemented. But several key provisions remain unfunded. The working group that had been charged with seeing the law through was largely dismantled after the two chairmen resigned out of frustration. The group hasn't met since early 2012. And in an email shortly before the working group imploded, Mullins recommended a strategy of trying to sell a decision to turn down federal funds as a demonstration of fiscal thrift. “I think this is the time we cut our losses,” Mullins states in the email in February 2013 to Assistant General Counsel Rebecca Frazier and Northrup, a longtime Fallin adviser.""