Oklahoma Halved Recidivism by Diverting People to Treatment. Two-Thirds of Counties Can't Do It.

Oklahoma has built one of the more effective jail-diversion operations in the country, and it has built it almost entirely in and around Oklahoma City. A report this week from public radio station KOSU lays out the geography of that success with uncomfortable clarity: where the programs exist, they work; where they do not, people get help only after they are arrested.

A Two-Speed System

The figures from Diversion Hub, a nonprofit headquartered in Oklahoma City, are hard to argue with. The organization served 8,168 clients in 2025 and now processes roughly 3,000 check-ins a week. Oklahoma County's recidivism rate is 27.45 percent. Among Diversion Hub clients, it is 15.97 percent — close to half.

The organization began in 2018 as a pilot with about five staff identifying gaps in the justice system. In June it moved into a new building that co-locates 16 partners, among them the Homeless Alliance, Oklahoma County treatment courts, Legal Aid Services of Oklahoma and a cell service provider. It has satellite offices in Norman and El Reno and plans to open one in Ada.

The state's own footprint is far thinner. Oklahoma funds four resource navigators for indigent defendants — one for each quarter of the state. Kaleda Battle, based in El Reno, covers northwestern Oklahoma, where clients without family or transportation "just have to walk or hitchhike," as she put it. Debbie Maddox, executive director of the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System, says roughly 70 of the 75 counties her agency serves are legal service deserts.

Meanwhile the state Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services runs early diversion programs — individualized case management and treatment under judicial oversight — in only 25 of Oklahoma's 77 counties. Maddox described "parallel lines of service that do not interact very often," with little buy-in from some district attorneys.

What the Money Buys, and What It Doesn't

What limits the system is not a shortage of evidence but a shortage of appropriations, paired with a statute that permits rather than requires. Oklahoma law authorizes district attorneys to run state-funded diversion programs in their districts; it does not mandate them, and a judge is not obligated to recommend an eligible defendant. The result is a patchwork in which the offer of treatment depends on which prosecutor's district a person happens to be charged in.

OIDS asked the Legislature last year for an additional $1.5 million to place a resource navigator in each of its satellite offices. The request was not granted. Some public defenders carry caseloads approaching 250 cases at a time.

The spending case is not abstract. A 2025 study by the Healthy Minds Policy Initiative estimated Oklahoma could save roughly $87 million a year by diverting about 19,000 people into alternative court programs for treatment rather than prosecuting them. Around 30 percent of Diversion Hub's funding in 2025 came from government entities.

Maddox's own summary of the problem points at the same gap that runs through levels of care across rural America, where treatment capacity thins out the farther a person gets from a city. "They have to get in trouble and enter the criminal justice system before that help is offered to them," she said. "An offer of help short of criminal activity should always exist in all of our counties." For people whose charges stem from untreated substance use and co-occurring conditions, that offer is often the first real contact with care they have had.