On March 5 and 6, a team of representatives from Safe & Just Michigan and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth visited Michigan state representatives and senators to urge them to resume action on our bills to end juvenile life without parole in Michigan. Last year, Safe & Just Michigan worked with supportive [...]
Michigan’s prison population nudged upward again for the first time in a decade, reversing a trend of rapidly falling headcounts inside prisons operated by the Michigan Department of Corrections. According to the figures recently published in the MDOC’s 2022 Statistical Report, there were 32,374 people incarcerated in Michigan prisons at the end of 2022, up [...]
Rethink felony murder Recently the U.S. Supreme Court and the Michigan Supreme Court have both acknowledged that life without parole sentences for juveniles who commit first-degree premeditated murder is unconstitutional, and cruel or unusual punishment. Yet, Michigan continues sentencing felony murder aider and abettors to mandatory life without parole where the defendants did not kill, [...]
This year started with a lot of promise for criminal justice reform advocates in Michigan. For the first time in 40 years, Democrats secured a hold on the governor’s desk and both chambers of the state Capitol, leading many to hope that our legislation would get favorable committee hearings and votes on the House and [...]
Give people mental health help More than 50 percent of all people will be diagnosed with a mental illness or disorder at some point in their lifetime, statistics say. That is a staggering statistic just in general, exacerbated when we consider “diagnosed” because many won’t be diagnosed. And without proper diagnosis, we begin to normalize [...]
The state Capitol is now in summer mode. Legislators are wrapping up work on their spring projects and getting ready to go back to their communities for their summer in-district work period, which means little action will be taking place in Lansing over the next few months. With that in mind, we thought we’d give [...]
We use the phrase “second chances” so often in criminal justice reform work that it can sometimes sound like a buzzword. We urge employers to adopt second-chance hiring to give people with a criminal record a chance at a job. The federal Second Chance Act provides grants to nonprofits and agencies that work to reduce [...]
It’s tragic that Kenneth Nixon’s false conviction cost him 16 years of freedom, but it’s fair to wonder, perhaps selfishly, what it cost everyone else. Since his 2021 release from prison, Kenneth has proven to be a skilled problem solver and coalition builder. As president of the Organization of the Exonerees, he has worked with [...]
For most of its history, Michigan had a generous, progressive “good time” system that reduced a prisoner’s parole eligibility date for every month they did not receive a citation for misconduct. (See: Barbara Levine, Citizens Alliance on Prisons & Public Spending, “10,000 Fewer Michigan Prisoners: Strategies to Reach the Goal” (June 2015) at pg. 76, [...]
A lot of attention lately has been given to the sudden rise in inflation and what that has done to consumer prices. A quick definition of inflation is the rising price of goods and services caused by the falling purchasing value of the dollar or other currency. Last month, the annual rate of inflation measured [...]