Brian Dickerson, Detroit Free Press, November 15, 2014 Click here to read the full article. "Will the Senate's paroxysm of responsible leadership inspire lawmakers to do other grown-up things in the remaining days of lame duck? State Rep. Joe Haveman, is hoping that it will. Haveman, the term-limited chairman of the the House Appropriations Committee, [...]
Newt Gingrich, Detroit Free Press, November 15, 2014 Click here to read the full op-ed. "We are not getting the public safety that our billions should be providing us. In state after state, we have overused imprisonment, even for low-risk offenders. Incarceration has become the norm despite clear evidence that many nonviolent offenders can be [...]
Click here to read full article. "Reforms to the way criminals are sentenced, incarcerated and monitored could become law by the end of the year after four bills were introduced in Michigan Legislature Thursday. House Bills 5928-5931 are the product of the Council of State Governments’ collaboration with state lawmakers to look at Michigan’s criminal [...]
Click here to read the full article. "Programs like this are needed as California’s older prison population is set to grow exponentially, particularly given many inmates’ lengthy sentences. About 5,400 are either on death row or facing life in prison without parole, and another 26,000 are sentenced to life with the possibility of parole. That’s [...]
Click here to read the full story. "These are just two stories from the front lines of the emerging crisis of America’s aging prison population. All across the United States, prison populations are graying, growing old and infirm behind bars. Between 1995 and 2010, the number of people in prison who are older than 55 [...]
Click here to read the full article. The research, which was conducted at the University of California-Irvine, found that the children of those who are serving jail time often suffer from serious health and behavioral problems. In fact, the study suggests that parental incarceration can be more detrimental to a child’s overall well-being than either [...]
New York Times Editorial, September 28, 2014 Click here to read the full editorial. Thanks largely to harsh and rigid sentencing laws, aging inmates — defined as starting anywhere from 50 to 65, depending on the state — make up the largest and fastest-growing segment of the American prison population. Between 1995 and 2010, the [...]
Detroit News, September 20, 2014 Click here for the full editorial. Excerpt below: ... Revamping the guidelines for youths could have an added benefit of reducing the state’s hefty $2 billion corrections budget. Allowing those who are not a danger to society to go free or keeping some from ever having to serve time behind bars [...]
August 6th, 2014 Click Here To Listen to the Full Story In 1980, Michigan’s corrections budget was 3% of the state’s general fund. Now it is 20% of the general fund. What caused this increase? Ken Sikkema, former Senate Majority Leader and Senior Policy Fellow at Public Sector Consultants, joined Stateside to answer this question. He said [...]
Former chief judges publish guest column pleading the Michigan Legislature to give juvenile lifers a 2nd chance Detroit Free Press August 7th, 2014 Detroit Free PressIn 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that giving a mandatory life without parole sentence to a teen violates the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual [...]