Oklahoma's prison population has grown by 2.3 percent, with private prisons, county jails and electronic monitoring handling more prisoners.
The Oklahoma Board of Corrections met Friday at the Lawton Correctional Facility, a private prison in southeast Lawton. Linda Pittman, deputy director of corrections, reported that the state was incarcerating 586 more prisoners on Sept. 4 than it was a year earlier. The number of inmates in state facilities declined slightly, but the number in private prisons rose by 311 (6.6 percent) and held in county jails under a contract with the state jumped by 63 (15.2 percent). A total of 236 more people were being monitored by global positioning system equipment, a gain of 52.2 percent.
The number of prisoners being held in county jails because there is no room elsewhere rose by 125, up 8.9 percent.
The overall corrections system population actually dropped because fewer people were under probation and parole supervision.






