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9

Jailed in the heartland

A half mile north of the courthouse, Miashah was incarcerated in a large windowless concrete structure in downtown Tulsa where visitors are body-scanned for metal objects and weapons. Cell phones and suspicious paraphernalia are seized. Anyone wearing a hoodie is turned away.

When booked into the Tulsa County Jail on November 19, 2013, Miashah joined a cadre of over a thousand women. Oklahoma has the highest rate of female incarceration in the nation—and the world. At the time Miashah was taken to jail, Oklahoma’s incarceration rate for women was nearly double the national average, fueled by draconian sentencing laws that hold women longer than men for similar crimes.51

Ed Martinez, Jr., a local Hispanic businessman from Tulsa, noted in a 2015 news article that his daughters and other young women frequently describe a common theme when they come into contact with law enforcement:

“Their cell phones are seized, which seems like a personal violation. If they try to prevent this violation, they are threatened with obstruction of justice charges. Women stopped for suspected traffic violations are immediately asked for permission to search their car without probable cause. If they decline, they are threatened with arrest. Once they enter the criminal justice system, they are assessed with multiple fines and fees, most of which support the criminal justice system itself. The state of Oklahoma also enforces sentencing enhancements, mandatory minimums, and harsh drug laws that result in unnecessary felony convictions and long prison sentences for non-violent women.”52

Multiple charges stemming from a single violation are often piled on by the arresting officer in a practice known as “stacking,” where related charges and fines are imposed for essentially the same violation. Many women are unable to pay the steep fines and court costs, and warrants are issued for “failure to pay” and new fines and court costs are added to the old. The system disproportionately harms poor people—and therefore minorities who are disproportionately poor—who often can’t afford to miss work, pay for daycare, or find transportation to appear at court hearings and to make payments.

This system, called “policing for profit,” feeds on itself, resulting in endless layers of debt for offenders as municipalities and counties attempt to raise revenue on the backs of their most vulnerable citizens to fund administrative costs that often have little to do with judicial procedures, such as law library fees, forensic science improvement fees, trauma care assistance fund, and the information systems revolving fund. Fees and fines make up nearly all of the court system’s budget, which means the deputies that arrested Keontae were funded largely by the same low-income people—like Miashah and Keontae—they wield a hammer over.

Unless she were exonerated, Miashah was destined to vanish into the ubiquitous cavern of the living female dead, their hopes and those of their families decimated in the teeth of a merciless legal grinder.