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Trauma

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. Yet, Michigan continues sentencing felony murder aider and abettors to mandatory life without parole where the defendants did not kill, [...]

2024-01-29T21:25:46-05:00January 29th, 2024|Categories: Blog, Parole, Reentry, Sentencing, Trauma|

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 with their own trauma. Her painful childhood experiences also became the genesis for “Pass the Mic,” a storytelling platform she [...]

2023-11-26T23:39:15-05:00November 26th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Crime survivors, Sex offenses, Trauma|

Meet our new intern, Sonnet Yancey

The year 2020 was a watershed for many people, including Safe & Just Michigan’s new intern Sonnet Yancey, who uses she/they pronouns. Yancey, who is finishing a bachelor’s degree in social work at Michigan State University, came to understand the depth of need for change during the tumultuous summer of 2020, as voices called for [...]

2023-09-28T15:37:04-04:00September 28th, 2023|Categories: Blog, Community reinvestment, Mental health, Trauma|

Hear some ‘Inside Voices’ – August 2023

Second Look leads to second chances My name is John Halcomb. I am 60 years old. I regret my violent behavior every day as I am reminded through the violence I see in my prison environment. This prison violence, however, began my rehabilitation when it caused me to empathically place myself in my victim's place. [...]

Inside Voices – January 2023

Inside Voices is an opportunity for our members who are incarcerated to voice their ideas and opinions to the outside world. Since they can't access our monthly electronic newsletter, Safe & Just Michigan prints a newsletter several times a year that is mailed to our members who are in prison. We have invited those readers [...]

Meet Safe & Just Michigan’s New Senior Research Specialist Cassie Larrieux

Cassie Larrieux is comfortable with data. She can talk about ratios and intervals or qualitative and quantitative information like most people can talk about what was on television last night or who won the big game. But for all that, Larrieux never loses sight of what those numbers truly show — the people whose stories [...]

2022-06-29T13:38:53-04:00June 29th, 2022|Categories: Blog, Crime survivors, Trauma|

A Day in the Life of a Community Engagement Specialist

One of the most rewarding things about working for criminal justice reform is getting people interested in transforming our court and prison systems and watching the momentum for change build, both in Michigan and nationwide. So, when I got a call from Sean Wilkinson, a reporter and videographer from San Francisco who is representing the [...]

Help for incarceration-related childhood trauma

We have long understood that incarceration of a parent can be traumatizing for a child — something we know from both peer-reviewed research and anecdotal evidence. Sadly, 1 in 10 children in Michigan have experienced having a parent in jail or prison, according to a 2016 study from the Annie E. Casey foundation. Children with [...]

2021-11-17T20:09:31-05:00November 17th, 2021|Categories: Blog, Juveniles, Mental health, Trauma|