As a Michigan native I’ve done a lot of work on behalf of our incarcerated residents, especially last year’s Good Time Campaign promoting HB 5666. I get questions from people interested in contributing to the movement about how they can get involved. Often people don’t know where to start and I always tell them that the resources exist, it’s about organizing with other people who are already engaging in the type of work that you want to do. This weekend was the perfect opportunity for people to learn about and plug into work that relates to transforming Michigan’s criminal justice system.
Michigan Lifer Shouts, My Life Matters Too!
My Life Matters Too, established by Quentin Jones incarcerated in Guss Harrison Correctional Facility, organized a panel discussion hosted by Silent Cry founder, Sharwanna Vaughn at The Shrine of Black Madonna Church in Detroit Michigan. The panel featured myself along with Ronald Simpson-Bey, director of outreach at Just Leadership USA; Cindy Eggleton, co-founder of Brilliant Detroit and Jamo Thomas a formally incarcerated juvenile lifer, each of us experienced with advocacy work from different angles of the spectrum. The discussion focused on families affected by incarceration, how mental health issues are exacerbated by incarceration and the current work being done statewide to address these issues. Watch the live stream of the full discussion here.
Michigan’s corrections institutions are suffering from severe conditions that include massive overcrowding, a lack of funding for adequate rehabilitative programming, understaffed in officers and severely understaffed in counselors and mental health professionals. The issue of overcrowding is particularly exasperated by the fact that Michigan has truth-in-sentencing laws that do not allow for good time credits to be accrued and intermediate sentences that leave prisoners serving 40% more of their sentence than the average prisoner nationwide. No one should be forced to spend more time in prison just because of the state they committed their crime in. As a result taxpayers are forced to pay $40,000 for per year for each of Michigan’s 40,000 incarcerated residents. That is a whopping annual cost of $1,600,000,000 to support incarceration in Michigan.
Michigan Governor Establishes Criminal Justice System Task Force
In an attempt to address this issue, Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer passed an executive order to initiate a task force to alleviate Michigan’s overburdened criminal justice system. Initially the establishment of this task force seems like a great development in fixing this issue. However Whitmer’s executive order focuses exclusively on jail and pretrial incarceration. Whitmer recognizes that Michigan’s pretrial sentencing process is heavily flawed resulting in a high amount over-sentenced individuals, like in the case of Jamo Thomas who was sentenced to life at fifteen, and false arrests like the case of Ronald Simpson Bey who spent 27 years in prison although he was innocent. Whitmer’s goal is to remedy those elements of the pretrial process that lead to these issues in order to decrease the number of people going into prison.
While this is a worthwhile development in adjusting our criminal justice system, I urged Governor Whitmer to consider the fact that because Michigan’s pretrial sentencing process has been flawed for so many decades there are already a vast number of people who’ve suffered from the effects of the flawed pretrial process and are currently sentenced and incarcerated in Michigan’s prisons. Due to this, it’s essential that Whitmer look into ways to alleviate the already overcrowded prison system in addition to correcting the issues that caused such overcrowding. Governor Whitmer should incorporate the following policies in order to make Michigan department of corrections more corrective, promoting rehabilitation and equipping those who have been incarcerated in Michigan’s prisons for decades with the skills needed for release and to be successful re-entering society. Those policies include the re-establishment of Pell grants, the reincorporation of good time credits and the restoration of voting rights.
Simple Reforms towards Exponential Transformation
Right now the federal government is embarrassingly ahead of Michigan in many of these areas. The federal government just recently introduced HR 2168 to lift restrictions from incarcerated citizens’ access to a Pell Grant funds Nationwide. Pell grants are a special source of aid that helps students obtain higher education degrees, Pell grants were restricted from Michigan’s prisoners less than twenty years ago, though it’s been proven that those who earn degrees in prison have a much lower recidivism rate after their release. Earning good time credits were restricted once truth-in-sentencing laws were passed less than twenty years also. All those who entered the system after 1998 were unable to benefit from earning time off of their sentence by maintaining good behavior, taking rehabilitative programs, completing certification classes, or obtaining a degree. Good time policies are in effect federally, where prisoners can earn up to 54 days/year off of their sentence, and in the vast majority of the United States because they are a win-win, it incentivizes prisoners to equip themselves to be more prepared for their release. Good time accruals also lower recidivism rates, allowing prisoners to go back home sooner to support their families. Lastly they alleviate the taxpayer of the burden of having to sustain a person living in prison that’s not at all contributing to society. Most importantly, rewarding individuals for good behavior makes prisons safer for everyone, the staff and the inmates.
Finally, discussion about restoring incarcerated citizens voting rights has reached national awareness through the recent advocacy of 2020 presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ stance in favor of full restoration. Right now Michigan is one of the more progressive states in the nation as it relates to this issue, though it is definitely not the most progressive. While Michigan does automatically restore the voting rights of citizens once they’re released from prison, in states like Maine and Vermont prisoners can vote while serving their prison sentence. There are three other states with active legislation to restore the voting rights of incarcerated citizens in New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey and Michigan is in the perfect place to do so as well. Michigan’s legislative session does not end until December so there’s still more than enough time for a representative to introduce such a bill. Along with this residents, like those living in Massachusetts, could also introduce the idea to the legislature through initiating a citizen’s petition. Enacting legislation through petition is a beautiful way to not only motivate legislators to take action but it also allows the people to have ownership over the things that we want to see change while raising awareness among the public across the state about the issues. Below I have attached the initiative petition that could be used for restoring the voting rights of incarcerated citizens as well as restoring good time for incarcerated citizens. Anyone who’s interested in submitting this documents to the state legislature, please feel free to contact me. I have no problem coaching you through the process.
The Next Meeting is Up to You!
Nearing the end of our panel discussion there was a question from an online viewer asking if and when another similar type of meeting would be. I responded to the viewer saying, whenever you’re ready to schedule it. Shawanna Vaughn, a New York-based activist from Silent Cry, organized this discussion beautifully by simply calling and asking if I would be willing to participate after booking the venue and setting her agenda for the discussion. I want to encourage residents in Michigan to do the same , a meeting like this can be held every single month or week if residents wanted, there are churches all over the area that would be more than willing to open their doors to such organizing to and I’m always happy to take a trip back home to contribute to discussions related to transforming our Criminal Justice system, especially for my brothers and sisters back home. Please, if you’re interested in a follow-up to this discussion or in organizing one we can make the time and the space, it’s all up to you. Along with this, later this week Just Leadership USA will be hosting a lobby day in collaboration with Nation Outside training participants on lobbying techniques before visiting the state capitol. As I said the resources and the opportunities exist for those who are eager to join please come join us on Wednesday.
