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 [...]
Every year in mid-November, thousands of criminologists from around the world gather in a large U.S. city for the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology (ASC). ASC is the primary professional association for criminologists and other academics that study crime. This year, the conference took place in San Francisco, and the theme was [...]
Last week, on October 10, Just Us Now and the National Lifers of America Inc. held a community day event at the state Capitol. The crowd was an eclectic mix of people who have served and been released from life or long sentences as well as their loved ones. Most in attendance wore shirts with [...]
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 [...]
On Sept. 9, a bipartisan group of state lawmakers introduced Clean Slate legislation to Michigan. If passed, this legislation will be crucial in helping people who have a criminal record and who have lived crime-free for years. This package of legislation would increase the number of these people who would become eligible for an expungement, [...]
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. [...]
We want you to be among the first to be able to order tickets for our 2019 Annual Dinner Meeting, taking place Thursday, Oct. 10 from 6-8:30 p.m. at the Radisson Hotel in Lansing. Tickets are just $25 a piece, or entire tables for $250. This year, we continue our tradition of bringing you an [...]
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 [...]
The Michigan House of Representatives has a new speaker this session, Rep. Lee Chatfield (R-Levering), and he has announced that the House committee process will work slightly differently this session than it has in previous years. Until now, bills were sent to any number of standing House committees. Each of these committees had the ability [...]
On Saturday, Nov. 10, 2018, John Cooper, our associate director of policy & research, traveled to Lakeland Correctional Facility to present at the monthly meeting of Chapter #1013 of the National Lifers of America organization (“NLA”). NLA is a statewide prisoner-based organization with an active membership in many prisons in Michigan. Its purpose is to [...]