It has been a difficult few weeks full of changes and challenges for all of us, We want to send our best wishes to you, your friends, and to your family during these trying times. One helpful things to do during a crisis is to keep connected and maintain a sense purpose. That’s why we’re [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Given the amount of discussion of the Clean Slate package lately, it would not be surprising at all to wonder where we are in the legislative process with this package of bills designed to greatly expand the clearance of public criminal records across the state of Michigan. Last Tuesday, October 29, the House Judiciary Committee [...]
On Tuesday, Oct. 29, the House Judiciary Committee met for a fourth time to consider the Clean Slate legislative package. This time, they voted it out of committee and sent it to the floor of the House for a vote of the full chamber. But before doing so, they adopted substitute versions of the bills [...]
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. [...]
The Clean Slate for Michigan package is a set of six bills that will transform how expungements are handled in our state. Once passed, they will open up expungement opportunities to more people, allow people to get expungements more quickly than before and automate the process in many cases. But since each bill handles a [...]
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 [...]