fbpx

Barbara Wieland

About Barbara Wieland

This author has not yet filled in any details.
So far Barbara Wieland has created 100 blog entries.

Overview of 2023-24 Session Judiciary Committees

On Thursday, Jan. 12 — the second day of the new session — the incoming Democratic majorities in the Michigan House and Senate announced committee assignments. For those of us interested in criminal justice issues, the focus is always the Judiciary committees, which handle the vast majority of criminal justice-related legislation. There is much to [...]

2023-01-25T13:32:57-05:00January 25th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Corrections budget|

Meet Kimberly Woodson, our new Fund Development Fellow

Kimberly Woodson was almost locked away forever. We should all be grateful she wasn’t. Not only has she started a Detroit-based nonprofit to help others reintegrate into the community after coming home from prison, Safe & Just Michigan is lucky enough to welcome her onboard as one of our two new fund development fellows. As [...]

2022-10-12T15:13:26-04:00October 12th, 2022|Categories: Blog, Juveniles, Lifers, Reentry|

Meet Scott Tompkins, our new Fund Development Fellow

Growth is carried out over the course of an entire lifetime. This is a concept that resonates well with Scott Tompkins. Over his lifetime, he has been a father, a journalist, an educator, a community organizer — and someone sentenced to 18 months in prison. Now back home in northern Michigan, Scott wants to put all [...]

2022-10-11T15:15:41-04:00October 11th, 2022|Categories: Blog, Courts, Prison programs, Reentry|

Meet our new social work intern Lucas Day

Lucas Day is still learning. A graduate from the Michigan State school of journalism and now a student pursuing a master’s degree in social work degree from MSU, Lucas has learned more through his interviews with the people he’s writing about than anywhere else. “I feel like my perspective is always shifting,” Lucas said. “The [...]

2022-09-30T14:33:07-04:00September 30th, 2022|Categories: Blog, Parole, Reentry|

Meet Safe & Just Michigan’s New Senior Research Specialist Cassie Larrieux

Cassie Larrieux is comfortable with data. She can talk about ratios and intervals or qualitative and quantitative information like most people can talk about what was on television last night or who won the big game. But for all that, Larrieux never loses sight of what those numbers truly show — the people whose stories [...]

2022-06-29T13:38:53-04:00June 29th, 2022|Categories: Blog, Crime survivors, Trauma|

Why Restoring Good Time is Good Policy

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, [...]

2022-03-21T14:58:08-04:00March 21st, 2022|Categories: Blog, Lifers, Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), Reentry, Sentencing|

A Day in the Life of a Community Engagement Specialist

One of the most rewarding things about working for criminal justice reform is getting people interested in transforming our court and prison systems and watching the momentum for change build, both in Michigan and nationwide. So, when I got a call from Sean Wilkinson, a reporter and videographer from San Francisco who is representing the [...]

What Caused Michigan’s Prison Population to Fall 12% in One Year?

Michigan’s prison population dropped by a drastic 11.7% between 2019 and 2020, driven by an effort to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Michigan Department of Corrections 2020 Statistical Report. While Gov. Gretchen Whitmer turned down requests to accelerate parole efforts during the pandemic, another decision of hers did lead to the sharp decrease [...]

2022-02-24T04:28:44-05:00February 10th, 2022|Categories: Blog, Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC), Parole|