Barbara Wieland

About Barbara Wieland

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Barbara Wieland has created 96 blog entries.

Meet Community Engagement Fellow Nealmetria Loper

Thirteen years ago, Nealmetria Loper came to a reckoning in her life. After living in a Detroit neighborhood that was troubled by violence and poverty, she decided she wanted better for her own children — and other children living in the city. Loper — one of two Safe & Just Michigan Community Outreach Fellows— already knew [...]

2023-11-28T14:23:54-05:00November 28th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Community reinvestment, Reentry|

Meet new Community Engagement Fellow Ceci Bordayo

Ceci Bordayo has many notable accomplishments in her life. She’s written and recorded “House of Secrets,” a song about her family’s secrets surrounding physical and sexual abuse, which has helped countless people come to terms with their own trauma. Her painful childhood experiences also became the genesis for “Pass the Mic,” a storytelling platform she [...]

2023-11-26T23:39:15-05:00November 26th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Crime survivors, Sex offenses, Trauma|

Hear these ‘Inside Voices’ – November 2023

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 [...]

2023-11-17T11:55:08-05:00November 17th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Courts, Elderly, Mental health, Sentencing|

Meet our new intern, Sonnet Yancey

The year 2020 was a watershed for many people, including Safe & Just Michigan’s new intern Sonnet Yancey, who uses she/they pronouns. Yancey, who is finishing a bachelor’s degree in social work at Michigan State University, came to understand the depth of need for change during the tumultuous summer of 2020, as voices called for [...]

2023-09-28T15:37:04-04:00September 28th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Community reinvestment, Mental health, Trauma|

Hear some ‘Inside Voices’ – August 2023

Second Look leads to second chances My name is John Halcomb. I am 60 years old. I regret my violent behavior every day as I am reminded through the violence I see in my prison environment. This prison violence, however, began my rehabilitation when it caused me to empathically place myself in my victim's place. [...]

2023 Mid-Year Legislative Status Update

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 [...]

2023-07-11T17:12:02-04:00July 11th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Jails, Juveniles, Lifers, Prison programs, Sentencing|

Meet Safe & Just Michigan’s Policy & Advocacy Manager Jazmine Wells

Something happened to Jazmine Wells on her way to becoming a prosecuting attorney: she visited a jail. Specifically, she visited jail as an undergraduate student at the University of Michigan through her participation in a program called Project Community. Project Community is a service learning program housed within the University of Michigan’s sociology department that [...]

2023-06-14T15:44:03-04:00June 14th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Community reinvestment, Jails, Prison programs|

Meet Zack Whaley, our new communications specialist

The technical aspects of photography, videography, and sound design have always been fascinating to Zack Whaley. He has spent many afternoons casually reading white papers on video compression algorithms or stacked CMOS image sensors. He wants to know every detail about the way a piece of gear works before he feels like he knows how [...]

2023-05-26T09:42:06-04:00May 25th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Crime survivors|

Don’t Throw Away the Key on Michigan’s Youth — Bring Them Home

The Michigan Legislature is considering a proposal to end juvenile life without parole in Michigan. Fully half the states and Washington, D.C., have already taken this step, banning the practice of sending children to prison to die, and another seven states currently have no one serving such a sentence. In 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court [...]

2023-04-27T14:18:49-04:00April 27th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Courts, Juveniles, Lifers, Parole, Reentry|