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people has been impacted by the US carceral state.

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The Carceral state encompasses three behemoth sets of structures: criminalization, policing, and confinement. Within each structure are subsets of institutions, ideologies, that make up our society, as defined by carcerality. Carceral is the root of incarceration, the phrasing of carceral state attempts to outline the vastness of incarceration both in and far beyond prison walls.
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Oklahoma’s carceral statecarceral state is a treacherous cycle that has left entire communities traumatized, victimized, and vulnerable.

For decades Oklahoma has relied on:

Mass Criminalization

Mass Punishment

Mass Incarceration

Mass Surveillance

Oklahoma

incarcerates 993 per 100,000 people, the third-worst rate in the United States, far more than the national average and significantly more than entire countries.

Black People

make up 7% of Oklahoma’s population but 26% of the incarcerated population
Share of Oklahoma Population
Share of Incarcerated Population

Latino People

make up 9% of Oklahoma’s population but 15% of the incarcerated population
Share of Oklahoma Population
Share of Incarcerated Population

White People

make up 69% of Oklahoma’s population and 49% of the incarcerated population
Share of Oklahoma Population
Share of Incarcerated Population
While Oklahoma is one of the top incarcerators in the world, we rank near the bottom in core public services including Education, Healthcare, and Housing. What if we focused more on improving these services and less on mass criminalization, surveillance and incarceration? How many lives would be saved? How many people would have a real chance at life? How far could we move away from 1 in 2?
Source: Prison Policy Initiative

About The 1 in 2 Campaign:

The 1 in 2 campaign is a narrative organizingnarrative organizing project cultivated by Foundation for Liberating Minds. Through the stories of people who have survived Oklahoma’s prisons, we find haunting retellings of injustice. We also find great resilience in the humanity of each person who has been criminalized and chose to continue living.

This campaign focuses on amplifying the stories of the many Oklahomans impacted by the carceral state to garner an inside look at the violence and injustice of this system and to also exemplify what else is possible to achieve true justice, true safety, true accountability, true redemption, and true community.
Narrative organizing is a combination of narrative change through community organizing.

Narrative Initiative states that “narrative organizing is the act of building, creating and using narrative to shift power towards justice, equity and democracy. Narrative without organizing is a collection of observations and stories. Narrative without organizing leaves narrative power to others. When we bring alignment, polyvocality, and community leadership to narrative work we are organizing people to hold and exert narrative power.”
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Harmful vs. Helpful Narratives

Punishment

→

Accountability

Criminal

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Redeemable

Fear of the “other”

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Empathy

Revenge

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Repair and Transform

The statistics startle us. The stories move us.


As you engage these stories we encourage you to move away from talking about “crime” and “criminals” as objective terms and begin understanding them to be targeted mechanisms to uphold racial and class hierarchy. It is for this reason stark disparities exist in carceral populations in Oklahoma, felt most harshly by Black and Brown people and the poor. In other words, mass incarceration is class war.

Ask yourself

What if there was another way than putting thousands of people in trauma-boxes that are the concrete cages of Oklahoma jails and prisons and millions of others suffering from the vicious cycle of no support once they are out?
If prisons are a deterrence why does harm and violence continue in our communities?
Why do people sell and use drugs? Steal? Does criminalizing these actions stop them?
If crime were objective why aren’t tobacco industry leaders behind bars? Secondhand smoke kills millions each year.
If someone has been violent, is throwing them in a violent place going to produce a less violent person?
#DreamRadically to an Oklahoma where people have robust resources, opportunities, a real chance at living a fruitful life. An Oklahoma community that when we mess up we aren’t isolated and labeled as the wrong we had done, but rather were able to be accountable and repair and heal from the wrongdoing or harm caused. That is the possibility of a fundamental re-prioritization of how we interact with one another in this state. And it starts with 1 in 2.

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