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 [...]
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 [...]
The Clean Slate legislative package has arrived, and now is the time to get on board and show your support and advocate for even broader reforms. The legislation is a set of bills that would, among other things: expand the number of people who are eligible for expungement, automate the expungement process in many of [...]
This is the third in a series of blogs related to understanding who is incarcerated in Michigan prisons, why they are incarcerated, and for how long. The first post looked at some of the demographics of our prison population. In the second blog, which took a look changing size of our prison population, we ended [...]
Last week, Safe & Just Michigan Policy Analyst Josh Hoe and I had the opportunity to be part of a group of 20 that had a tour of the Vocational Village at the Parnall Correctional facility in Jackson. Parnall’s program is the second of its kind in the state. The first program was developed in [...]
This is the second in a series of blogs related to understanding who is incarcerated in Michigan prisons, why they are incarcerated, and for how long. The first blog addressed the first part of the question, of who is in prison; this blog is a general overview of the factors that impact Michigan prison population. [...]
Safe & Just Michigan acquired information from the Michigan Department of Corrections (MDOC) through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) last year. This data is a snapshot of everyone who was under the supervision of the Department of Corrections on October 30, 2018, so the information here may be different than our earlier blog describing [...]
While Michigan has seen its overall prison population steadily fall over the past years, this not been the case for incarcerated women. It’s important to note that women still comprise a very small percentage of the state’s overall prison population — just 5.4 percent. Unlike the male population, which is spread out among nearly 30 [...]
The man sitting across from me never got to say goodbye to his mother. She died while he was incarcerated and he wasn’t able to be with her during her last days or to join his family at her funeral. He hasn’t been able to see any of his daughter get married, go to any [...]
Just a few months ago, it appeared as though legislators had no appetite for creating medically frail parole for incarcerated people in Michigan who can no longer accomplish regular daily tasks such as feeding or dressing themselves. After being diluted last year, the medically frail parole proposal finally made it out of the Michigan House [...]