We are now 46 days away from a historic election. Here in Michigan, having a felony or misdemeanor conviction on your record is no barrier to voting, so long as you’re not currently incarcerated and serving a sentence. That means that the moment you leave jail or prison, you can vote. If you’re on probation [...]
People who have been incarcerated routinely struggle with employment barriers, including a jobless rate that hovered around 25 percent before the COVID-19 crisis hit, according to the Prison Policy Institute. Faced with unemployment rates the nation has not seen since the Great Depression and employer policies tilted against hiring people with a criminal record, thousands of [...]
It’s no secret by now that 2020 is an unusual year. From the way we work to the way we send kids to school, and even the way we keep in touch with loved ones who are incarcerated, nearly everything we do is being done differently this year. So hopefully, it won’t come as a [...]
Juvenile lifers Trauma Summer Camp: healing reimagined. With the alarm ringing at 5 a.m. on a Sunday morning, I am thinking to myself, "I still have to pack and load my truck and pick up Walter by 6:15 so we can be in Ann Arbor by 7.” Walter is a friend from the [...]
This blog is the first in a series of three comparing the results of the Wayne County Jail report and the findings of the Joint Task Force. This blog focuses on what offenses people booked into jail for. In May 2020, the Vera Institute of Justice released a report on the practices of the Wayne [...]
Michigan has often struggled to find people qualified to fill certain jobs, such as skilled trades workers and health care professionals. Licensing laws that are structured to prohibit anyone with a criminal past from obtaining a requisite license and screening questions on job applications that rule out anyone with a conviction have deepened the skills [...]
The recommendations of the Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration are getting ready to officially start their move through the Michigan Legislature next week. When people ask me about the best ways to address over-incarceration I usually with the question: “Do you mean in jails or in prisons?” Jails house people who are [...]
I had been looking forward to this great opportunity as the new community engagement specialist at Safe & Just Michigan. Then, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer put the state under shelter in place status the day after my first day on the job. I couldn’t help but think about how exactly I could engage the community during [...]
The Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration identified the suspension of driver’s licenses for reasons that have nothing to do with unsafe driving as one of the major drivers in Michigan’s jail growth over the past few decades. In 2018, nearly 358,000 people lost their driver’s license for reasons that had nothing [...]
On Tuesday, June 9, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Corrections held a meeting to discuss the prison population and the Michigan Department of Corrections’ response to the Covid-19 crisis. However, due to pending litigation, the review of the MDOC’s response to Covid-19 is delayed until a future meeting. What can’t be delayed or denied is [...]