Last week’s meeting of the Criminal Justice Policy Commission (CJPC) will be it’s second to last. Despite an effort in both the Michigan and Senate to extend the commission’s mandate at the last minute, there appeared to be no desire from the legislative leadership to give the CJPC second life. Michigan’s CJPCC was created by [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
Image is from the Sentencing Project’s Still Life report:https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/still-life-americas-increasing-use-life-long-term-sentences/ Four members of the Safe & Just Michigan team attended the two-day convening on Ending Perpetual Punishment in Detroit on July 12-13. The aim was to bring together representatives from organizations who are actively trying to reduce life and long sentences, to discuss what [...]
On July 10, the Criminal Justice Policy Commission held its monthly meeting, including a report from the PRV/Habitual Offender Subcommittee suggesting an amendment to Michigan’s habitual offender statute. Safe & Just Michigan supports changes to the Habitual Offender statute that would result in shorter sentences. One of the main drivers of mass incarceration is length [...]
The June meeting of the Criminal Justice Policy Committee (CJPC) included the introduction of a new chair, the results of new research conducted on sentencing disparities in the state of Michigan and a review of our state’s habitual offender statute. Overseeing her first meeting was the new Chair Amanda Burgess-Proctor, an associate professor of criminal [...]
Michigan has seen its prison population fall 23 percent since 2006, when we recorded the largest number of incarcerated people in our state at 51,515. That’s the good news. However, this decline has been offset by a steady increase in the length of stay. Michigan’s prison system has one of the longest average prison sentences [...]
Here’s a paradox: Michigan is known around the country for having the one of the longest prison sentences in the country, but even so, more than seven out of every 10 people committed to prison in 2017 were sent to serve short sentences of fewer than three years. How can this be, and what does [...]
We know by now that Michigan’s prison population is falling. From the high of 51,515 people reached in 2006, our state’s prison population has fallen 23 percent to 39,666 as of the end of 2017. To understand why that is happening, it’s good to examine how that population figure can change. Two things affect that [...]
The Michigan Department of Corrections released its 2017 Statistical Report on Jan. 23, 2019. It releases statistical reports annually, and each year they contain hundreds of pages of facts, figures, charts and tables that help paint the picture of Michigan’s criminal justice system. The information covers topics such as how many people are newly sentenced [...]