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Featured Blogs
Inside Voices – September 2024
Harsh sentences lead to ‘death by incarceration’ Over the last 40 years, Michigan has slowly but undeniably adopted “Death by Incarceration” (DBI), for prisoners serving life sentences. Prior to the sentencing reforms that began in [...]
Inside Voices – August 2024
Michigan’s prisons are understaffed and overcrowded On July 3, 2024, Corrections Union President Byron Osborn “sounded the alarm” announcing prisons are dangerously understaffed and unsafe, and calling on Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to deploy the National [...]
New state budget asks MDOC to reduce fees and fines
Throughout the week, Michigan's lawmakers have been hard at work finalizing a state budget for next year. That budget is now complete, and it has some promising implications for people working for criminal justice reform. [...]
Inside Voices – May 2024
View on criminal justice in Michigan It is my belief, from having initiated five requests for commutation of my sentence, that the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) parole board is invested in purposefully interfering in [...]
Office visits to end JLWOP
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 [...]
Michigan’s prison population on the rise again — barely
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 [...]
Inside Voices – February 2024
NOTE: Readers are cautioned that the following letters involve themes of physical and sexual abuse. How much time is enough for rehabilitation? I have been incarcerated for 10 years. When I came to prison [...]
Inside Voices – January 2024
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. [...]
2023 By the Numbers – One Year in Our Work
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]