The bills in the Clean Slate legislation widen the expungement process to include hundreds of thousands of people who had been excluded from it and also automate that process in many cases. However, the bills also contain terms that can be confusing. For instance, many bills refer to “assaultive crimes” without giving a clear definition [...]
Given the amount of discussion of the Clean Slate package lately, it would not be surprising at all to wonder where we are in the legislative process with this package of bills designed to greatly expand the clearance of public criminal records across the state of Michigan. Last Tuesday, October 29, the House Judiciary Committee [...]
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, the House Judiciary Committee met for a fourth time to consider the Clean Slate legislative package. This time, they voted it out of committee and sent it to the floor of the House for a vote of the full chamber. But before doing so, they adopted substitute versions of the bills [...]
In late October, presidential candidates and formerly incarcerated people came together in the historic Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia to discuss criminal justice reform. "Justice Votes 2020: A Presidential Town Hall" was a joint effort of several organizations, such as Voters Organized to Educate (VOTE) and The Marshall Project, and was live streamed via NowThis. [...]
Last week, on October 10, Just Us Now and the National Lifers of America Inc. held a community day event at the state Capitol. The crowd was an eclectic mix of people who have served and been released from life or long sentences as well as their loved ones. Most in attendance wore shirts with [...]
The Clean Slate for Michigan package is a set of six bills that will transform how expungements are handled in our state. Once passed, they will open up expungement opportunities to more people, allow people to get expungements more quickly than before and automate the process in many cases. But since each bill handles a [...]
Two weeks ago, the ACLU of Michigan, with state Sens. Curt VanderWall (R-Ludington), Jeff Irwin (D-Ann Arbor) and Sylvia Santana (D-Detroit) announced a forthcoming bill package to reform habitual sentencing in Michigan. The proposed reforms will address four concerns related to habitual sentencing, one of which was discussed in an earlier blog, that resulted in [...]
Last week’s meeting of the Criminal Justice Policy Commission (CJPC) will be it’s second to last. Despite an effort in both the Michigan and Senate to extend the commission’s mandate at the last minute, there appeared to be no desire from the legislative leadership to give the CJPC second life. Michigan’s CJPCC was created by [...]
The Clean Slate legislative package has arrived, and now is the time to get on board and show your support and advocate for even broader reforms. The legislation is a set of bills that would, among other things: expand the number of people who are eligible for expungement, automate the expungement process in many of [...]
This is the third in a series of blogs related to understanding who is incarcerated in Michigan prisons, why they are incarcerated, and for how long. The first post looked at some of the demographics of our prison population. In the second blog, which took a look changing size of our prison population, we ended [...]