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Courts

Day of Empathy 2020: What Can It Mean for You?

I walked into my first Day of Empathy event nearly four years ago feeling terrified, socially averse and embarrassed. I was ashamed and had been shamed. I had only recently completed my three years of incarceration and a bit more than two years of parole and probation. The memory of being paraded, in a bright [...]

Can My Prior Record Be Used Against Me?

(This is the first post in a series Safe & Just Michigan is running on Michigan’s habitual offender laws.) (At Safe & Just Michigan, we generally use human-centered language. However, to keep technical concepts clear in this blog post, we will adhere to legal terminology, which is unfortunately not human-centered.) A new senate bill package [...]

2020-03-09T14:06:58-04:00February 6th, 2020|Categories: Blog, Courts, Sentencing|

Get to know the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration recommendations

In January 2020, the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration issued a list of 18 legislative action items that — if enacted — could revolutionize Michigan’s county jails and the lives of the people who come into contact with them. The task force drafted their recommendations after holding six meetings across Michigan. [...]

2020-01-31T03:46:08-05:00January 28th, 2020|Categories: Blog, Courts, Diversion, Jails, Mental health, Recidivism, Sentencing, Substance abuse|

What did the Michigan Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration recommend?

What happens when you bring a task force together including Democrats, Republicans, legislators, victims-rights advocates, county commissioners, law enforcement officers, and formerly incarcerated people? A list of 18 recommendations designed to reduce the jail population across the entire state. According to the original executive order the Michigan Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration was [...]

MDOC in 2018: By the numbers

Each year, the Michigan Department of Corrections releases a factbook of statistics describing their department, the state prisons and the people who are incarcerated inside them. This year’s factbook, which looks at statistics from 2018, was recently released. Overall, the facts and figures point to continuing trends: Michigan’s prison population continues to fall, while our [...]

Safe & Just Michigan’s Top 10 for criminal justice reform in 2019

As 2019 winds down, we thought we’d take a moment to look back at a busy year for criminal justice reform in Michigan and take stock of all that’s happened. From the introduction of Clean Slate to the passage of Raise the Age, the formation of the Joint Task Force on Jail and Pretrial Incarceration [...]

Serious Misdemeanors Defined

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 [...]

2019-12-10T15:15:44-05:00December 10th, 2019|Categories: Blog, Courts, Jails, Sentencing|

What’s an “assaultive crime”?

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 [...]

2019-11-08T16:18:10-05:00November 8th, 2019|Categories: Blog, Courts, Reentry, Sentencing|

Justice Votes 2020: Presidential Panel

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. [...]

2019-10-30T23:33:25-04:00October 30th, 2019|Categories: Blog, Courts, Racial equity, Reentry, Sentencing, Substance abuse|